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THE ASBESTOS SOCIETY 
OF SINNERS 



The Asbestos 
Society 
of Sinners 


Detailing the Diversions of Dives and others on the Play- 
ground of Pluto, with some broken threads of Drop- 
stitch History, picked up by a Newspaper man 
in Hades and woven into a Stygian Nights’ 
Entertainment. 


BY 

LAWRENCE DANIEL FOGG 


MAYHEW PUBLISHING COMPANY 

92-100 Ruggles Street 
Boston, Mass. 


fl Y bRAHY of C0NGRF.3S 
; Two Conies Received 

AUG 11 19«6 

OSTr#* 

*y 8 %m 

' COPY R. 



Copyright, 1906 
by 

Lawrence Daniel Fogg 

All Rights Reserved. 


Dedicated to 

JOHN KENDRICK BANGS 
Who first made Hades a pleasant place of abode and aroused 
in his reader a desire to go cruising on the Styx 


CONTENTS: 


Chapter. Page. 

I. The Summons from Satan 3 

II. Shady Sinners of the Styx 15 

III. John Brown’s Body and the Bones 

of John Paul Jones 31 

IV. Henry the Eighth and His Harem 

in Hades 47 

V. What Methuselah Thinks of 

Dr. Osler 63 

VI. The Virgin Throned in the West: 

A Tabloid Tangle of Love 
and History 75 

VII. “Boss” Tweed on Tainted Money, 
With Some Nonsense Defini- 
tions of Fads and Finance 95 

VIII. How the Creation Centered About 
a Petticoat : A Revised Version of 
Darwin’s “Ascent of Man” 107 

IX. When Adam Was a Boy : Random 

Recollections of the Oldest 
Inhabitant 119 

X. Election Day Beyond The Styx 129 

XI. Noah’s Personally-Conducted 

Excursion to Earth 143 

XII. The Man With the Megaphone 153 


Epilogue. The Land of Fulfilled Desire 

167 


\ 


Pleasantries in Passing. 

J OHN KENDRICK BANGS, Houseboat- 
on- the- Styx , care The Century Association , 
New York — Perhaps you , as set] -elected 
jester at the court oj the Son oj the Morning , 
will wonder that a newspaper man should de- 
liberately set out on a pilgrimage to Hades. I have 
often been told I ought to go there , but I pause on 
the banks of the Styx for reflection ere I rush in 
where all but fools fear to tread. Yet in mirroring 
forth the doings of the diocese of Bishop Beelzebub , 
I shall cast no reflections save on the dead , who 
can reflect no more , and like that other clown , 
more famous than I , will “ use the devil himself 
with courtesy.” Having been an iconoclast , and 
as it is only a step from the breaking of idols to 
the smashing of trusts , I have had the temerity 
to dream of ending the monopoly of the particular 
section of the universe hitherto sacred to Lucifer 
and Bangs. As you have a copyright on Hades , 
you could make it hot for me if I invaded your 
territory without permission , so I ask you for a 
“dead head” pass. I don’t claim more than my 
rightful share; there will still be room enough for 
both of us to roast chestnuts on the other side of 
the Styx. 

Pardon this discomfiture of sense by nonsense , 


yet I am not going to make an excuse for this 
abuse oj absurdities , for what is nonsense but the 
flower oj sense , the wine of wit, the harmony of 
humor sounded by an organ crankless, the pipe of 
Pan replaced by one of briar wood? But as Prin- 
cess Scheherazade might have said: “That’s an- 
other kind of a smoke as well as another kind of a 
story.” Even in this “Stygian Nights’ Enter- 
tainment,” I cannot hope to equal her record of 
a “ Thousand Nights and One” — whether I mean 
spent in story-telling or smoking in Hades I leave to 
your imagination. But then, I am not a woman ! 

As Hell has ceased to have a place in theology, 
there is no reason why the devil should not get his 
due in fiction. Emigration will set his way as 
soon as the character of the Cimmerian climate 
becomes definitely ascertained, but my trip to 
Hades will be more than a climatological tour. 
While in the interest of science, my subterranean 
explorations ought to point a pun and tangle a 
tale. 

Your “farthest south” was to the Styx. I shall 
not linger there, but if I can elude Cerberus, I shall 
slip through the gates where we are told to “ abandon 
hope,” and take up my habitation in Hades, with 
daily commutation to New York. Methinks the 
inquisitor of the fountain pen ought to have as 
much fun from a frolic with the heroes of history 
in their present abode as the inquisitor oj the fork 
and flame. 

Nor do I fear that this Stygian sequel to “the 
history that is written” will be shunned as some- 


thing sacrilegious , for the average American is so 
generous regarding bookmakers that he will buy 
anything , concerning anything , at any time and 
in any place. He will not even register a protest 
on the ledger 0} the Hotel Hereafter! 

If you will permit a newspaper man to go on a 
second “Pursuit of the Houseboat I would like 
to dedicate this account of a trip to the playground 
of Pluto to the man who blazed the way to Hell. 
May I have a shady corner in Hades, with the 
degree — three above zero — of A. S. S., meaning, 
of course, member of the Asbestos Society of Sinners? 

Till death do us unite beyond the Styx, and 
assuring you of a warm reception, weatherwise 
and otherwise, when you too shall get a summons 
from Satan, believe me, happy to go 

After you, my dear Bangs, 
LAWRENCE DANIEL FOGG. 


Castle Craig, 

The Hanging Hills, 

Meriden, Connecticut. 
All Fools’ Day {April 1 ). 


My dear Mr. Fogg — Although many critics 
have given me Hades, I have never recorded any 
exclusive claim to its possession. You are there- 
fore wholly at liberty to go there yourself — for 
literary purposes only , I hope — in so far as I am 


concerned. As jor the dedication , I feel highly 
honored and send you my most cordial thanks for 
the compliment. 

Faithfully yours , 

JOHN KENDRICK BANGS. 

The Century Association , 

New York , N. Y. 

Moving Day (May i). 




THE SUMMONS FROM SATAN. 




















































































































































































































CHAPTER I. 


The Summons from 
Satan. 

W HILE waiting for an assignment, in 
the local room of the New York 
Universe, I began to while away 
the time by reading the fulsome effu- 
sions of the press agent of Greater 
Luna Park. They aroused in me the spirit of cov- 
etousness — I envied the press agent his vocabulary, 
which put the supply of superlatives into bank- 
ruptcy; and I was jealous of the success of 
Thompson & Dundy, whom I hoped some day to 
rival. Their first success had come with “A 
Trip to the Moon;” why might not I — 

“Go to Hell,” I read on the paper which the 
‘ ‘ copy ” boy just then thrust into my hand. Before 
I could question him, the “devil” had gone. 

I glanced suspiciously at my fellow-scribes to 
see who had perpetrated the joke, if such it was, 
but no one seemed to be watching what effect the 
command had upon me. I again examined the 
odd message. It was in the handwriting of Mr. 


3 


4 


THE ASBESTOS SOCIETY 


Burroughs, the city editor, so to him I went. 
Holding out the slip of paper, I said : 

“I have just received an assignment to ‘cover’ 
a certain subterranean resort named after the 
box in which printers throw battered type, but as 
the route there is unfamiliar, I have come to 
you for instructions.” 

The “czar” of the city room frowned, but on 
reading the missive the frown was succeeded by 
an amused smile. 

“Who gave you this?” he asked. 

“The ‘devil’.” 

“That is evident from its contents. It must 
have been that new boy Jake, who took the slip 
off my desk when a telephone call interrupted 
me as I was writing. Had I completed the mes- 
sage it would have read ‘Go to Hellgate.’ A 
wreck has just occurred there and our marine 
reporter has telephoned for assistance. How- 
ever, you are aware that I have made it a rule 
never to change an assignment. I make no excep- 
tion in your case to-night.” 

“What!” I gasped. 

“Remember also that this paper never accepts 
an excuse. You must either hand in your story 
or your resignation. Perhaps I ought to explain 
further, though the Universe has no place for the 
newspaper man who cannot achieve the impossi- 
ble or for the reporter who wants a reason for 
what he is told to do. We want men who can 


OF SINNERS. 


5 

carry ‘a message to Garcia’ — or to Lucifer, if 
need be. 

“The ting-a-ling of my desk telephone at the 
psychological moment when I had uncon- 
sciously consigned you to a colder climate than 
that of New York, was a summons from Satan. 
Why it didn’t come through the medium of the 
‘printer’s devil’ is a mystery, unless His Majesty 
desired to show me that he is up-to-date in having 
a system of telephones installed by a famous 
electrician who recently crossed his wires and the 
Styx. I tried to transfer him to the managing 
editor by telling him that he had got a wrong 
connection, as my jurisdiction is limited, but he 
assured me that Hades is less than a hundred miles 
from New York, which makes me responsible 
for what happens there! Not a very pleasant 
thought, is it? 

“Lucifer wants you to go to Cimmeria and 
interview Henry the Eighth. His much-married 
Majesty is angry at the liberties the historical 
novelists have taken with his wives and wants to 
divorce himself of his wrath through the columns 
of the Universe. Satan also wishes us to decide 
a dispute between Adam and Methuselah as to 
whom is the oldest inhabitant.” 

“But how in the name of — ” 

“Don’t say it,” warned the city editor. “That 
word is always expressed by a blank in the paper, 
so you might as well leave it blank in your speech. 


6 


THE ASBESTOS SOCIETY 


Besides, to say it would be justification for keep- 
ing you down there, and we want that interview 
without fail, even if you have to write it on as- 
bestos and deliver it to mortals at a seance of the 
Society for Psychic Research. We want the 
work well done, so you will have to take your 
chances of being scorched. 

“Discussions regarding Hades have waxed 
almost as hot as the subject of dispute itself. Most 
people believe it is built on the Turkish bath 
plan with departments of varying temperature. 
Those are the kind of people who swallow the 
thermometer of Dr. Doubt and die by degrees. 
If you find it as pleasant as John Kendrick Bangs 
did, you will want to stay and join the Stygian 
smart set, so I’ll transfer your insurance from the 
Equality to the Rock of Gibraltar and see to it 
that your sister does not starve or freeze, whatever 
may be the climatic fate of her brother. 

“Don’t take the subway route to the under 
world, for then your chances of coming back 
would be grounded. You are to take the Twenty- 
third Street Ferry for the Jersey shore. New 
York and Hell are said to be convertible terms, 
but I’ve never before heard New Jersey given 
that distinction. However, Bangs says that’s the 
route, and as he plays golf with good intentions 
over there every summer, he ought to know. 

“Don’t take any baggage, except perhaps your 
sister’s sunshade, as only shades and shady char- 
acters are permitted to cross the River Styx. You 


OF SINNERS. 


7 


more nearly come under the second category than 
any other member of the staff, so I have chosen 
you. As you may need ‘money to burn,’ call on 
the cashier for a ‘ sinking fund ’ before you start 
on your journey. 

“By-the-by, while you are in Hades you might 
ask John Paul Jones whether he would prefer 
burial in New York, Washington, Annapolis, 
Philadelphia or Ocean Grove. That would be 
a ‘scoop’ worth more than the marital intemper- 
ance of the Mormon king. Get his signature so 
that if ‘our friends, the enemy,’ cry fake we can 
show them ‘what’s in a name.’ As Mr. Bangs, 
by the exercise of his imagination, was enabled to 
penetrate the Stygian regions, a newspaper man 
should have no difficulty in doing likewise by the 
exercise of his nerve; but if Charon bars the gate 
owing to your being still in the flesh, this will 
admit you. It’s a skeleton key.” 

Half an hour later I stood on the deck of a ferry- 
boat which was plowing the waters of the North 
River. Obedience to the commands of the 
“czar” of the city room soon becomes second 
nature to a newspaper man, and I had often 
boasted that I would go anywhere on earth or 
under the earth if sent there by Mr. Burroughs. 
I squared my shoulders to the breeze from the 
bay and resolved that I would not fail now that 
I had been put to the test, even if — A shudder 
finished the sentence; my mind stood palsied as 
I faced the Unknown. 


8 


THE ASBESTOS SOCIETY 


It was a night of Stygian blackness, just the one 
to be chosen for such a dark mission. We were 
now nearing the Jersey shore and could hear the 
lap of the waves on the piling in the slip. A blaze 
of light astern showed that one of the boats was 
on its return trip. The hands of the clock on the 
ferry building pointed to midnight. 

Out of the inky blackness suddenly loomed a 
great battleship which struck as much terror to 
our hearts as if it had been the Flying Dutchman. 
Had it been a merchantman we should have 
thought it was indeed the famous phantom ship, 
for it displayed no lights and the decks were de- 
serted. Our captain signalled to reverse engines, 
but the order came too late. The two vessels 
collided with a mighty crash. There was a rend- 
ing of timbers, an inrushing of water, a cry of 
despair from the passengers, then a stampede 
for the life preservers. 

I had no sooner got a cork belt properly adjusted, 
as I thought, than the ferryboat sank. The suc- 
tion drew me down and down and down; then I 
shot up to the surface again, feet foremost. I 
expected that the life belt would right me as soon 
as I came to the surface, but as I * continued to 
hang head downward, the awful truth flashed 
over me — the belt had not been sufficiently tight- 
ened under my arms and had slipped down. 
Convulsively I struggled, but in the effort only 
succeeded in swallowing more water. The blur 


OF SINNERS. 


9 


of a thousand lights danced before my eyes in 
the floating bubbles of the phosphorescent water, 
a roar as of a mighty artillery thundered in my 
ears — then all became a blank; in newspaper 
parlance, I had ceased to be “live matter.” 

That sinking fund with which I had provided 
myself before leaving the mundane earth must 
have carried me a long distance downward, for 
when I opened my eyes I was upon the banks of 
the River Styx. Presently Charon’s yacht came 
in sight. There was no one on board but Cap- 
tain Charon himself, for with the exception of 
Lazarus, John Kendrick Bangs, and myself, no 
round trip tickets have ever been issued to blades. 

“Step lively, please,” yelled Charon, who had 
evidently been a Broadway trolley conductor 
earlier in his career. His success in knocking 
down fares had prompted Satan to employ him 
to transfer “fares” over the River Styx. The 
American invasion has extended downward as 
well as outward. To hear the motto of New 
York on the banks of the Styx made me feel quite 
at home, especially when Charon added: “Plenty 
of room up front.” 

A number of shades had stepped aboard the 
yacht. I was following them when Charon 
halted me. 

“Stop your whistling,” he commanded. “Do 
you think this is a Sunday school picnic or a 
political rally? I don’t believe you are eligible 


IO 


THE ASBESTOS SOCIETY 


for the journey, anyway. Hades is [the only 
place within the fifty-mile limit that is not a side 
show for New York tourists. This yacht transports 
shades only.” 

“Well, you see,” I began hesitatingly, “Lorimer 
says clothes don’t make the man, but that they 
make three-fourths of him, and this suit is of the 
very latest shade of blue.” 

“I’ve been told gray is fashionable just now,” 
he commented, critically. “Everybody in Hades 
has the blues, so you won’t be off color,” he added, 
somewhat mollified. 

“Then you know my ancestors are all shades,” 
I pleaded, “and our city editor says I have a 
shady reputation.” 

“A newspaper man!” Charon gasped, his face 
growing pale. “I’ll have to let you come aboard, 
or you will go back and ‘ roast ’ me, and I get all 
the ‘roasting’ I can stand in Hades between trips. 
A newspaper man! “Nuff said. Jump aboard.” 

“Where is the house-boat?” I asked, ever on 
the lookout for “copy.” 

“Everyone nowadays asks that fool question,” 
Charon retorted, angrily. “I believe John Bangs, 
like George Eliot, is a woman, for he can’t keep 
a secret, while Harper & Brothers offer him royal- 
ties for it. Shortly after the ‘ Pursuit of the House- 
boat’ that craft disappeared from the river and 
Sherlock Holmes with it. He went back to haunt 
Conan Doyle, I guess. I hope he won’t come 


OF SINNERS. 


ii 


back again in a hurry, for he made no end of 
trouble with his inferences and his deductions.” 

“What — ” 

“No more questions, if you please. I am not 
on the witness stand, nor will I consent to be 
interviewed. Besides, talking is an infraction 
of the rules of the Asbestos Society.” 

“Do they seek to muzzle the press?” I asked 
indignantly. 

“So few newspaper men come this way that 
that isn’t necessary,” returned Charon. “We 
have a free press. It is said that ‘the devil fre- 
quently becomes a publisher by way of diversion.’ 
This is the Styx, not the Delaware, and we are 
going to Hades, not to Philadelphia, thank good- 
ness! The order was framed to muzzle some one 
more formidable than reporters or devils — 
woman!” 

“The Asbestos Society is quite a suggestive 
name.” 

“Its formation was quite recent. A learned 
scientist up on the earth, by tapping on the ground 
to invoke Pluto, discovered extensive deposits of 
asbestos in Hades. As soon as the news reached 
the Styx, nothing would satisfy ‘Boss’ Tweed 
but the formation of a society for the purpose of 
robbing cremation of its traditional terrors. As 
to wish is to have, every denizen of the domain of 
the departed is now wearing an asbestos suit. 
Dives must have his diversion, even if the devil 
is cheated out of his own.” 


12 


THE ASBESTOS SOCIETY 


We had crossed over the Styx. Charon quickly 
made fast to a wharf and prepared to disem- 
bark. As I landed I noticed on the dock a legend 
which read: “All hope abandon, ye who enter 
here.” 

At last I was in Hades ! 


SHADY SINNERS OF THE STYX. 



CHAPTER II. 


Shady Sinners of the 
Styx. 

I WAS in the region of Outer Darkness to 
which the dead are banished to await 
the judgment. All about me was a misty 
blackness so oppressive that one felt as if 
wedged between mountains. My feet sank 
in the soft earth, composed of those good inten- 
tions with which I had helped to pave the road 
to Hell. Voices of other days seemed to sound 
in my ears; out of the shadowy mist forms of 
ghostly men and women emerged and then were 
lost to sight, swallowed up in the darkness. Per- 
ceiving a glimmering light in the distance I hast- 
ened toward it. A phantom house barred my 
path, but I flitted through it as though it were 
not. A pale twilight now made objects discerni- 
ble and I breathed more freely, for I no longer 
stumbled over the good resolutions, which, being 
broken, blocked the pavement. 

A troop of spectres surrounded me and tried to 
stop my progress. Shades though they were, 


i5 


i6 


THE ASBESTOS SOCIETY 


their attentions were annoying and I tried to 
brush them aside. My hands passed through 
shadows and the phantoms laughed in derision. 

“ What’s the news ? ” they cried again and again. 

I hadn’t come to Hades to be interviewed, and 
knowing from the inside some of its perils, I de- 
clined to relate what the upper world was doing. 
This enraged the shades, who gathered about me 
threateningly. Just then one of my companions 
on the Styx yachting trip came to my aid. His 
appearance seemed to inspire the spectres with 
terror, for they all fled. The newcomer was 
talkative. 

“Did you recognize in the leader of that band 
our old friend, Diogenes?” he asked. 

“No, I never met the gentleman. Up on earth 
when any one is looking for an honest man, he 
doesn’t come to a newspaper office: he goes to a 
detective agency.” 

My companion gave a scarcely perceptible 
start. 

“Diogenes is no longer looking for an honest 
man. Poor fellow, he knows it’s no use. He 
thought he had an honest man a few years ago 
in ‘Boss’ Tweed, but the politician fell from the 
high pedestal of the ‘man higher up’ when he 
consented to pose for a caricature of himself by 
Nast. Our friend of the tub and lantern has 
begun to wonder if when he finds an honest man 
it will prove to be a bachelor girl! Not long ago 


OF SINNERS. 


i7 


President Harper sent a professor from the 
University of Chicago to tell Diogenes that he 
could have an honest man as soon as he had bled 
him for another hundred million. So the philoso- 
pher is waiting for — ” 

“John D. Rockefeller!” 

“Your deduction, my dear journalist, does 
you credit.” 

Somewhat piqued that I did not reply, the 
stranger said : 

“Why don’t you express wonder that I knew 
you were a journalist? Watson always does.” 

“There is only one Watson,” I protested. 
“Besides, it has always seemed to me that he was 
singularly obtuse. Unless you lent him your 
spectacles, Watson couldn’t hold down a job in 
the city room of a New York daily for twenty - 
four hours. I’m not a journalist, but I acknowl- 
edge that ‘ newspaper man ’ is written all over me, 
from the pencil in my pocket to my ‘nose for 
news,’ which is abnormally developed. It’s the 
easiest thing in the world to tell a newspaper man 
by his nose, an actor by his clothes and a detective 
by his cocaine syringe. For instance, you are — ” 

“The shade of Sherlock Holmes, just returned 
from a trip to earth. But I really died when I fell 
over the cliff. That fall made Conan Doyle a 
Sir. He thought that if he could bring me back 
to life I would make him an Earl. He tried to 
breathe in me the breath of life, but while the 


i8 


THE ASBESTOS SOCIETY 


dear public wept at my death, they viewed my 
resurrection with indifference. Ghost stories have 
been exorcised for all time, so I’m back here for 
good.” 

“ Did Satan send for you ? ” 

“Yes, to assist him in ultimately securing the 
three persons on earth whom he is most eagerly 
awaiting — David Belasco, John Kendrick Bangs, 
and Marie Corelli. 

“The author of the ‘Darling of the Gods,’ 
in order to lend realism to the final scene, made a 
compact with Satan to reproduce Hades on the 
New York stage; in return he is to give his soul 
— or his salary — as soon as the play has run its 
course. That’s the reason Belasco prolonged 
the run of ‘The Darling of the Gods,’ even after 
it ceased to pay expenses. A theatrical advance 
agent, who is to transfer the entire production to 
Hades, was here several weeks ago and said that 
the thousandth performance had been reached. 
Yo San, who is serving her thousand years of 
penance — a year for each day of the play’s run 
— says she never would have thought of being 
wicked if Belasco had not prompted her from 
the wings. The man who could write ‘To lie a 
little is better than to be unhappy much ’ deserves 
a place alongside of George Washington.” 

“What! Is the father of his country here, 
too?” 

“Oh, yes! they’re all here. Washington is 


OF, SINNERS. 


i9 


more of a father than ever. He had no family 
in life, but he has one here larger than he likes — 
the children of the only woman he never loved. 
It’s strange how many women go out of their 
way to remind George how he met defeat at their 
hands long before he fought the British.” 

“ Evidently women of those days didn’t appre- 
ciate veracity.” 

“ Don’t throw that cherry tree at his head when 
you see him or he’ll think you have an axe to 
grind. He has never been able to find out who 
wrote that fable, /Esop being dead and George 
Ade unborn. When he does, Hades will be too 
hot to hold both of them, although of course there’s 
no change of weather to speak of, as the mercury 
never seeks the bulb. It is always trying to knock 
the roof off its glass house; that’s the reason there 
is no throwing of stones in the under world.” 

“But what has Satan against John Kendrick 
Bangs?” 

“His Majesty likes to be taken seriously. Most 
practical jokers, you know, resent a joke at their 
own expense. While he delights in playing with 
men, to make fun of him is an offense which Satan 
cannot condone. Then you know Bangs sent 
me in ‘Pursuit of the House-boat’ and I frus- 
trated a great many plans of His Majesty. 

“Lucifer describes woman — to disabuse your 
mind of the impression that I have held converse 
with his Satanic Highness, I will state that I am 


20 


THE ASBESTOS SOCIETY 


quoting Marie Corelli, his press agent — Lucifer 
describes woman as a frivolous doll of pink and 
white with long hair frequently not her own. He 
hates women, for they have made him what he is 
and keep him so, according to Marie. ‘Women,’ 
he says, ‘are much less sensitive than men and 
infinitely more heartless. They are mothers of 
the human race and the faults of the race are 
chiefly due to them.’ Considering that the eternal 
feminine is so fond of him, I am surprised that 
the Evil One does not reciprocate, but then 
Lucifer was once an angel and we all know that 
however angelic she of infinite variety may appear, 
she is not an angel. I have heard men of moods 
and appetite talk of women in the same strain as 
Lucifer and so have ceased to wonder that each 
woman knows one particular man — usually her 
husband — whom she describes as a devil. 

“Lucifer had found out the truth of the Latin 
proverb which says ‘Trust not a woman, even 
when dead,’ and as he didn’t want any divided 
skirt rule, he had planned to have Capt. Kidd 
take them to Paris or to Italy, which Robert 
Burton says is a hell for women. Satan thought 
he was well rid of them until after the day of 
judgment, so you can imagine his burning rage 
when, following Bangs’ orders, I brought them 
safely back to Hades. When the humorist leaves 
the earth it will be jumping out of the frying pan 
of a vivid imagination into a very hot fire of 
reality.” 


OF SINNERS. 


21 


“And Marie Corelli? I thought her ‘Sorrows 
of Satan’ — ” 

“That’s just it. Through all the centuries 
Lucifer lacked a champion until Marie Corelli 
sat in judgment on the world and gave it fits 
after reading ‘Paradise Lost’ and losing her 
heart as well as her head — as many another girl 
has done — to the angel who ‘fell, never to rise 
again.’ Lucifer would have had no attraction 
for most women if he had not fallen. Milton 
made him a hero, many persons have embraced 
him, but no one ever fully understood him except 
Marie, and great shall be her reward.” 

“How can there be rewards in Hades?” 

“Oh, we have our society here just as in the 
upper region, only the world asks who a man is; 
here the Smart Set asks who he was. Caste is as 
strong here as in your Four Million and in our 
upper Ten Thousand.” 

“But even yet I do not understand how the 
champion of His Satanic Majesty is to be re- 
warded.” 

“Lucifer has long wanted a wife. Marie 
Corelli alone pleases his fancy, besides possessing 
the necessary qualifications for the position. Here 
she will be supreme; she will rule even the arch 
fiend himself. To her kings will bow and 
princes kneel. Won’t she make it hot for some 
of the reviewers who ‘roasted’ her on earth! 
There is only one place where reviews live — 


22 


THE ASBESTOS SOCIETY 


in Hell. There is a torridness of climate here 
which agrees with them. After all, Hades is no 
more than a caricature of your world and the 
doings of men. 

“Your society is but vanity; what, then, shall 
be said of the festivities of Hades? We dine, and 
our Barmecide feast leaves a nauseating feeling 
of emptiness. Here amusement is the lash of 
correction. All is illusion; nothing is real. The 
fashions of all the centuries flourish here at one 
time, for every fashion which has had its day 
straightway goes to Hell. I sometimes think 
that is the principal reason why women are dis- 
satisfied here; they had to follow the fashion in 
vogue while they were on the earth and when a 
late comer appears in a new style hat or dress the 
other women suffer torments worse than any 
Satan could devise, especially on Easter Sunday. 

“The twilight of Hades forms a sort of X-ray 
which passes through the clothes and flesh and 
enables us to see into the heart and mind of one 
another. The other day Paul Jones met George 
Washington, walking arm in arm with King 
George the Fourth. He stopped to say: 

“Admiral, I’m glad my children are giving you 
the honors which are justly yours.” Yet as his 
mind was as an open book, Jones read his 
thoughts thus: 

“‘Why couldn’t that meddlesome Porter let 
well enough alone, instead of bringing a mummy 


OF SINNERS. 


2 3 


from France to oust me from my place as first in 
the hearts of my countrymen ?’ ” 

Sherlock Holmes puffed reflectively on the shade 
of a cigar for a few moments; then knocking off 
an imaginary ash, he continued: 

* ‘Whether matches are made in Heaven is a 
question, but they certainly are not made in Hell, 
despite the abundance of brimstone and the pres- 
ence of Lucifer. Courtship is impossible where 
the heart betrays and fine words are belied by 
revealed thoughts, where the naked truth cannot 
be clothed in ‘fig’ language. When all reality 
has vanished, there can be no delusion, so that 
men who seldom spoke in the other world save 
to utter a falsehood have come to speak the truth 
here. There is only one exception — George 
Washington.” 

“You are rather hard on — ” 

“Remember that Hades is the only land which 
holds the mirror up to nature. In the flash of 
the earth’s footlights, we act our part in the play 
of life to dazzle other men and blind them to our 
faults. Life is a series of poses, each like the 
film of a moving picture which by the juggling of 
the operator suggests continuous action, though 
composed of many lifeless photographs. Our 
life is an optical illusion. We are judged by what 
men see us do and yet they perhaps never see us 
when the mask is off and we have forgotten to 
pose. We strike our attitude and the world 


24 


THE ASBESTOS SOCIETY 


applauds or jeers. Only when life’s candle is 
snuffed out do we forget to pose, for then a great 
awe is upon us. What a haunting thought it is 
that ‘the evil that men do lives after them’! In 
life we hugged our sins to ourselves, guarding them 
zealously; so in death, why cannot they, like the 
good we do, be decently interred with our bones ? 
When we are laid low, why must our sins go on a 
rampage of their own, both in the upper and the 
under worlds ? In Hades the mask has been torn 
away and we see man as he is, not as he would 
have us see him.” 

“ That must Be diverting.” 

“Hades is the best place in the universe for the 
study of history. Socrates is here but his philos- 
ophy, as well as his wife, has deserted him ; he is 
now a chronic kicker. Moses strikes his rod on 
the rocks in vain, for molten lava flows instead of 
water; the result of his rage is seen at Vesuvius, 
the devil’s chimney. Pontius Pilate is forever 
washing his hands, but the red blood flows afresh. 
Shakespeare tells him that the damned spot will 
not out. Eve is setting the fashion in fig leaves 
and serpentine dresses, but like her earthly de- 
scendants, is discontented, although she takes 
a certain spiteful satisfaction in the fact that the 
number of women in Hades is on the increase. 
Methuselah is hunting for the fountain of perpet- 
ual youth. He wants to be a boy again and his 
favorite poem is ‘Backward, turn backward, O 


OF SINNERS. 


25 

Time, in thy flight.’ He suffers a periodic attack 
of second childishness every thousand years.” 

“And John Paul Jones?” 

“Poor Paul! he never will forgive me for dis- 
turbing his bones.” 

“I thought Ambassador Porter — ” 

“ Do you mean to say that Watson hasn’t told 
the world about my last and greatest case ? Why, 
that was the very reason I returned to earth! 
Ambassador Porter came over to England and 
besought Sir Arthur Conan Doyle to find the dead 
sea dog. Only one man could do it — myself. 
Lucifer refused to give me up, but Dr. Doyle 
matched his cunning with that of His Satanic 
Majesty, gave him a dose of cocaine, and won. 
Watson says each case is more difficult than the 
last, but I do pride myself that this exploit would 
have baffled every one save the great Sherlock 
Holmes. By a series of deductions I came to the 
conclusion that the bones of John Paul Jones 
would be found wrapped in tinfoil, encased in a 
leaden coffin, swimming in alcohol under a stable. 
With this information it was easy for Porter to do 
the rest. As Watson says : ‘ It was all so absurdly 
simple!’” 

“Tell me your story.” 

At sight of my note book the detective shook 
his head. 

“I commissioned Watson to do that, but 
Conan Doyle, who owns the copyright, may wish 


26 


THE ASBESTOS SOCIETY 


to give the Ambassador the credit until he comes 
to join us on the banks of the Styx. I never did 
seek notoriety, but Dr. Doyle, while waiting for 
patients who never came, reversed the usual 
practice of physicians ; he brought a dead man to 
life, and of course I was so grateful that I took 
cocaine to drug my modesty and — the literary 
market.” 

“The latest news we had of you on earth was 
that you had retired to study bee-farming on 
Sussex Downs.” 

“Bee-farming? That is the most unkind 
sting of all! Then Sussex must reach down to 
Hades, for here I am, Oslerized and ostracized. 
James Payne calls books the chloroform of the 
mind and so I have been embalmed between 
covers, and ‘finis’ written for my epitaph. Never 
mind, it is a matter of indifference to me now that 
I have had my revenge on that pirate.” 

“Pirate!” I gasped. 

Holmes laughed at my horrified tone. 

“You forget that I’m English, ” he said. 
“ When I pointed out to Porter that the way to 
fame lay in a dead man’s shoes I paid off a score 
of more than a century’s standing. Maybe you 
are not aware that when a body is disturbed 
after being once buried, its soul must inhabit the 
Outer Darkness a thousand years longer than the 
original decree. Let us see how the admiral 
bears up under the shock. In Wishland that is 


OF SINNERS. 


27 


an easy matter. Paul Jones, I desire your 
presence. ” 

A moment’s pause, then out of the twilight 
flitted the spectre of a man in naval dress. A 
husky voice came to us as from the throat of a 
phonograph : 

“A thousand years more! No quarter! No 
quarter ! ‘ I had only just begun to fight !’ ” 

The detective laughed mirthlessly. 

“What a merry place is Hades! Imagine a 
thing and you have it. Think, and at once the 
thought takes visible form. Truly, this is a land 
of magic that needs no Aladdin’s lamp. Behold 
the jugglery of fulfilled desire — that is John 
Paul Jones!” 


JOHN BROWN’S BODY AND THE 
BONES OF JOHN PAUL JONES. 

































































































































































































































































































































































































CHAPTER III. 


John Brown’s Body and 
the Bones of John 
Paul Jones. 

T HAT Paul Jones was not alone soon 
became evident. With his coming, 
other ghostly forms had taken shape 
in the semi-gloom and the admiral 
became the centre of a throng which in- 
cluded the greatest men of all time — the only great 
men, in fact, for one must die before he can 
be accorded any measure of greatness. Only 
in the perspective of the past does a man loom 
large in the vision of the present. 

“It were better to be a live politician than a 
dead hero,” observed Paul Jones, reading my 
thoughts. Then he sighed. 

“But you are honored on earth and even here,” 
I said, with a glance around the circle at the 
illustrious members of the Asbestos Society of 
Sinners. 

“Earthly honor is but hysteria,” Jones replied 


3i 


3 2 


THE ASBESTOS SOCIETY 


wearily. “Yet, ’twas ever thus. One is usually 
crushed by the honors showered upon him, as 
were the Romans in attending the banquet of 
Emperor Elagabalus, who rained roses upon his 
guests until all were buried and smothered by the 
flowers. Like them ‘bouquets’ are thrown at 
me when I am dead, of which I would have been 
more appreciative while living. Yet ‘bouquets’ 
are preferable to ‘ brickbats,’ even though they do 
not make so lasting an impression. Hades, as 
you will soon learn, is more of a news centre than 
London, and so I have heard that in recent years 
the city hall of New York was draped in mourn- 
ing for Hiram Cronk, last survivor of the War of 
1812, whose only claim to fame was that he did 
not die sooner. If earthly honors died on earth 
I wouldn’t complain, but they are all reproduced 
in Hades, which is a burlesque of the upper world. 
Ever since Ambassador Porter found a body 
which he thought might have looked like me had I 
looked like that body, I have been given homage 
by every man in Hades. The joke of the matter 
— if a Scotchman may take an Irish bull by the 
horns and joke at his own funeral — is that there 
is no certainty about the body being mine.” 

“Do you doubt it in the face of — ” 

“When face to face with a dead doubt, don’t 
look a gift corpse in the mouth,” interrupted the 
admiral dryly. “Had Porter done so, he would 
have discovered two gold teeth, and I really must 


OF SINNERS. 


33 


insist that if that body is mine, those teeth were 
filled after I died. In the old days, before the 
doctors invented appendicitis, I did not mind 
swallowing all the grape sent with the enemy’s 
compliments, but I always did draw the line at 
the dentist’s chair, and any manipulator of the 
forceps would have struck a snag had he inves- 
tigated my corpse too closely. Perhaps I ought 
not to complain, for it may be that if I keep my 
mouth shut I shall get a decent funeral, and un- 
fortunately this is supposed to be my funeral.” 

“ But the proofs,” I remonstrated. 

“My dear fellow, it is easy to pile up proofs on 
a dead man, for he cannot rise up to refute them. 
Here is a dead body; Paul Jones is dead: there- 
fore, this must be Paul Jones. That may be 
logic but it is not common-sense. Yet this text- 
book reasoning is no more absurd than the 
‘proofs.’ First of all, there was the absence of a 
coffin plate; had the body been missing instead 
of the name it would have been more worthy of 
notice. An autopsy has revealed traces of the 
disease of which I died, and this after a hundred 
years! If they were as expert in diagnosing the 
living as they are in cutting up the dead, fewer of 
the mistakes of the doctors would have to be 
buried from sight and mind. Then these learned 
savants triumphantly point to the height as a 
sure proof that this is the body of Jones and not 
of Smith, though both families are so numerous 


34 


THE ASBESTOS SOCIETY 


that the bones of one more or less doesn’t matter 
save as a museum exhibit — from which fate may 
the Stars and Stripes protect me ! It seems from 
this deduction that I was the only person ever 
born into the world who ever attained to a stature 
of five feet and seven inches. That’s what a man 
gets for measuring up to the standard! The 
most remarkable coincidence of all is that neither 
uniform nor sword was found. Evidently Paris 
makes it a custom to bury its dead, civilian and 
officer alike, in a shroud of mystery, epaulets and 
gold stripes. 

“Really, the only proof distilled is that the body 
was found floating in alcohol. I was so fond ot 
that preservative in life, according to the historical 
novelists, that if a dead body can move of its own 
volition, I know mine would have sought out the 
alcohol. It may be the body of John Jones or 
John Smith, or it may be the remains of some 
Johnny Craupaud of a century ago; who knows? 
A slip of genealogy has lost thrones and made more 
than one man get off the earth.” 

“At least you must concede it is not often that 
many cities squabble over the honor of giving 
sepulture to a man’s remains.” 

“After a century of neglect,” retorted Jones, 
“‘history repeats itself,’ as my friend Tom Hey- 
ward will tell you.” 

‘“Seven cities warred for Homer being dead 

Who living had no roof to shroud his head!”’ 


OF SINNERS. 


35 


“It’s a wonder some of those cities did not 
foresee the coming events of which Homer was 
the shadow and make a play for Jones. Now, 
Seward, it’s your turn. Come, Tom, speak your 
little piece.” 

“‘Great Homer’s birthplace seven rival cities 
claim; 

Too mighty such monopoly of fame.’” 

Paul Jones was about to speak when he was 
interrupted by a newcomer who chanted: 

‘“Seven wealthy towns contend for Homer dead 
Through which the living Homer begged his 
bread.’ ” 

“That is Mr. Anon,” whispered Lord Bacon. 
“Shakespeare is quite jealous of him, for Anon 
claims to be the most voluminous author in the 
world and, like Byron’s reviewer, has ‘just enough 
learning to misquote.’ He seldom quotes anyone 
correctly, not even excepting himself, but in this 
he is not unlike those other authors whom excess 
of egotism persuades into signing their names to 
that which would be their own had not some one 
said it before.” 

“‘Heed him not, gentle sirs, 

’Tisbut the fool,”’ 

observed Shakespeare, 


3 ^ 


THE ASBESTOS SOCIETY 


“I ought to give you a pension for making my 
sayings so well known ; I notice you never quote 
your own sentiments because mine answer all 
purposes so much better.” 

It was Lord Bacon who spoke. 

“I was talking of you, I grant that,” retorted 
Shakespeare. “Shall I repeat it? My wife says 
that it’s only by a hair — ” 

“You two men are always quarreling,” inter- 
rupted Anon. “Please keep the age of Anne 
from his lordship’s notice, for she hath a way to 
fry his Bacon. My lord, you should never judge 
a poet by his hair.” 

“Nor yet by his feet,” interrupted Longfellow; 
“although if a poet looks well to his feet there are 
no heights to which he cannot climb.” 

“I accept the measure of your judgment,” went 
on Anon calmly. “As for the lady, Delilah’s 
barber stunt convinced Samson it isn’t wise to tell 
the truth to a woman.” 

“Yet I must insist,” continued Lord Bacon, 
“that Shakespeare is rather shy of hair to be a 
real poet. Of course, I have heard the story that 
Anne Hathaway, after a conference with Delilah, 
sought to reduce the strength of the Samson of 
letters by cutting his name from Shakespeare to 
Shakspere and trimming his hair to make assur- 
ance doubly sure, but Lot’s wife, in looking back- 
ward, has recommended that the pig-tale be swal- 
lowed with a grain of salt. My dear Willie, your 


OF SINNERS. 


37 


poetry has pains in its feet, your rhyme has re- 
ceived the absent treatment, and your rythm, like 
your hair, is lacking.” 

“Oh, well, hair doesn’t grow on brains,” re- 
torted the claimant to “ Hamlet.” 

But Anon was not to be out-argued, and 
continued : 

“A hirsuit chrysanthemum growing on a man’s 
head is more likely to indicate a quarterback 
Freshman on the gridiron than a hunchback 
poet on the Mount of Parnassus. As for the 
poet’s other extreme, metrical feet are not always 
symmetrical.” 

“You’ve told it all — so for a spell 
For more rhymes where’s the reason? 

Besides, just now we are in h — ” 

“That’s blank verse,” interrupted Shakespeare. 

“You mean damn!” interjected Lord Bacon, 
profanely. “Let me lend you the metres, Bill, 
so that you may measure up to my standard, or 
else cork the rythmic bottle and spill no more 
mimic blood of red ink.” 

“The gas man is the only person who controls 
my metre,” said the Bard of Avon, chuckling at 
his own wit. “You quite sweep me off my meta- 
phorical feet. That may not be original, but I 
have no aspirations in the direction of originality.” 

“The last broker who arrived from Wall Street 


38 


THE ASBESTOS SOCIETY 


says that you are too full of quotations to be origi- 
nal,” sneered Lord Bacon. 

“Have you forgotton that you once said ‘a man 
that hath no virtue in himself ever envieth virtue 
in others?’ Bartlett allows you seven pages, 
while he gives me more than a hundred. Famil- 
iarity breeds imitators. Even in quotations, you 
follow after me.” 

“If you wear so long a face, you’ll stub your 
toe on your chin,” observed Anon, noting that 
Lord Bacon was getting the worst of his contro- 
versy with Shakespeare. “Never mind Bill’s 
raving. Burton tells him he larded his lean books 
with the fat of others’ works. Maybe that’s the 
reason why he gives his readers mental dyspepsia ; 
to inwardly digest ‘Hamlet’ would disagree with 
the stomach of an ostrich. After all, the world 
knows that Shakespeare was not a man but a 
syndicate, to which I was the largest contributor. 
I’ll call the man a plagiarist who says I’m a liar.” 

No one cared to knock off the verbal chip 
which Anon had put upon his shoulders, so Paul 
Jones resumed: 

“Have I equalled Homer’s record?” 

“Of course,” I answered; “you, as an Ameri- 
can, couldn’t stand being beaten by a foreigner 
like Homer, even though you are both dead ones. 
You are claimed by New York, Philadelphia, 
Washington, Arlington, Richmond, Fredericks- 
burg, Annapolis, and Ocean Grove. I believe 


OF SINNERS. 


39 


there are a few other cities whose names have 
escaped my memory. Have you any preference 
in the matter?” 

“It’s odd no one has thought about consulting 
me before. I could have settled the controversy at 
once. France did not treat me or my bones very 
well, yet I can’t say I am glad to leave there. It 
isn’t very pleasant to be dead, but it’s worse to 
have people squabble over your body. I wonder 
if Porter ever heard the adage ‘ Let the dead rest 
in peace,’ and that other one ‘Cursed be he who 
moves my bones!’ You’ve seen two dogs fight 
over a bone, but you never saw the bone fight. 
I am nothing but bones.” 

“New York’s claim — ” 

“I hope they won’t bury me in New York. 
I’ve heard it said that the metropolis is noisy 
enough to wake the dead and it is certain that my 
presence would make Captain Landais turn over 
in his grave. I always did bore Landais and so 
if I invaded the territory of the tired, St. Patrick’s 
cemetery would yawn and give up its dead.” 

“Had you been a politician,” observed Matt 
Quay, “some faction of our party would long since 
have unearthed one of your letters in which you 
had selected your burial place.” 

“You have not yet told me your choice,” I 
reiterated, remembering the city editor’s parting 
words. 

“I would rather be embalmed in the throbbing 


40 


THE ASBESTOS SOCIETY 


heart of the sea, with which my own heart beat 
so long in unison. My grave has been unmarked 
for a century, so why not forever ? I would prefer 
to be commander of that greatest army of all, the 
unknown dead, whose resting place is marked 
only by monuments of billows and flowers of 
feathery spray. A bridal veil of silver surge is as 
elaborate a shroud as I desire.” 

“ How about cremation ? ” 

“We’ll get enough of that down here some day, 
so it is useless to undergo the ‘roasting’ process 
twice. Yet it has its advantages. Soldiers and 
sailors don’t get much time for godliness, you 
know, and as cleanliness is next to it, cremation 
might — ” 

“John Brown’s body lies a smouldering in — ” 

That was as far as Mr. Anon could proceed, 
for he had fired John Brown’s anger. That 
worthy said he was hanged if he were going to 
allow anybody to “ roast’ ’ him by any such incen- 
diary remark. 

“Choke him off,” came the chorus from all 
sides. “Here’s a rope. String him up.” 

This brought up such unpleasant recollections 
of the past that John Brown subsided. I hast- 
ened to pacify him by observing: 

“You have no cause for disquiet, for your bones 
lie peacefully in the Adirondacks at North Elba.” 

“ Hush ! ” warned Holmes. “That word always 
invokes Napoleon.” 


OF SINNERS. 


41 


The Corsican had indeed materialized. He 
glared at me as he said: 

“Peace at Elba? If you found peace there, 
you accomplished more than did the great Napo- 
leon, and that were impossible.” 

“Ah, but you see I hadn’t met my Waterloo,” 

I retorted. Wellington laughed tauntingly. 

“Neither had I when I went to Elba,” supple- 
mented Bonaparte, and then and there I met my 
Waterloo at the hands of Napoleon. It is poor 
policy for a writer of history to dispute the maker 
of it, though I am aware the historical novelists 
hold other views. For a moment it seemed as 
if Wellington’s tantalizing mirth would precipi- 
tate another battle between the illustrious war- 
riors. Then the two men shook hands, looking 
like two prize fighters about to enter the ring. 
Nothing happened, however, and with a trace of 
disappointment in his tone, — for immortals are 
very like mortals and he dearly loved a fight, — 
Paul Jones went on: 

“It is a good thing I’m dead, for living heroes 
always get restless and tumble from the clay 
pedestal on which an admiring public places 
them. Heroes should be handled with care, for they 
are perishable goods. Both Dewey and Dowie 
have had their day. Dewey turned his house 
over to his wife so the sheriff couldn’t get it, as 
many another man has done before and since. 
Evidently the dear public didn’t believe the two 


42 


THE ASBESTOS SOCIETY 


were one, for the hero-worshippers swept him to 
obscurity on a tidal wave of regretful tears. I 
wonder if he said it was all Mrs. Dewey’s fault. 
You know it is more difficult to manage a wife in 
America nowadays than it was in the days of 
Solomon, when the wives were so frequent that 
a man couldn’t remember which one was to 
blame.” 

“ The English still claim that you were a pirate,” 
I observed. 

“I feel quite honored at so illustrious an acces- 
sion to our ranks,” said Captain Kidd. 

The admiral smiled. 

“ Stop your Kidding” he said to the pirate. “ I 
believe my conduct was unsatisfactory to them 
on several occasions when I bearded the lion in 
his channel. The English are queer. They 
made Captain Pierson a baronet for getting 
defeated.” 

“If we had had Paul Jones,” said Lord Nelson, 
“we would have made him prime minister and 
buried him in Westminster Abbey. England is 
the most grateful of all nations.” 

“You need not remind me of the ungrateful- 
ness of republics,” rejoined Jones. “I have ex- 
perienced it, though I am not a living example. 
But, my lord, I wish I had had you pitted against 
me in the days of ’77; I would dearly have loved 
to have exchanged shots with you.” 

“You are too kind,” drawled Nelson, lifting 


OF SINNERS. 


43 


his monocle to his blind eye. “I really can’t see 
you in that light.” 

“You have an eye single to your own interest,” 
I said to Nelson; then turning to Jones: 

“We have swung around the circle and you 
haven’t yet told me — ” 

“We will leave it to Roosevelt,” replied the 
admiral. “Whether it is John Brown, John 
Jones or Johnny Craupaud, he will see that the 
body gets a square deal — box!” 

“How about your epitaph? I would suggest: 
First in war, last in peace, and at present in the 
hearts of his countrymen, to mark the tomb of the 
father of the American navy. That epitomizes 
your whole career.” 

“I do not want to usurp Washington’s paternal 
honors. Of course all epitaphs are written by 
Mephisto, ‘ the father of liars,’ as you know, but 
if mine were to be truthful, my tomb would bear 
the simple inscription : 

t “Pause, stranger, yet weep not, 

For here lies the body of 
John Paul Jones — perhaps!” 

















































































































































































' 

















































































































































































































































































HENRY VIII. AND HIS HAREM IN 

HADES. 






CHAPTER IV. 


Henry VIII. and His 
Harem in Hades. 

s x UAKER worship may be as appro- 

I I priate as any other kind on 
Sunday,” observed William Penn, 
“but this silence is getting on my 
nerves. Why don’t you say some- 
thing funny, you humorists ? What’s the use of 
having famous funny men in this society if they 
cannot enliven Hades on a dull Sabbath?” 

“I’m not in the humor to be humorous to- 
night,” said Bret Harte, who was busily engaged 
in making “Condensed Novels” by tearing to 
shreds without reading, their contents from the 
title page to the finis ; book reviewing they desig- 
nate it up on earth. 

“Do you call that wit?” sneered Eugene Field. 

“If you can define the difference between wit 
and humor, I’ll promise to laugh the next time 
you see things at night,” retorted Harte. 

“Eternity is too short for definitions, except 
to a philologist,” evaded Field. “Ask Dick 


47 


4 8 


THE ASBESTOS SOCIETY 


Whately; the archbishop of Dublin is the only 
man who discriminates English synonyms.” 

“I know when you don’t ask me,” replied the 
doctor. “ Consult Webster.” 

“Mortal cannot live by wit alone,” commented 
that philologist. 

“Being immortal, I can,” said Johnson. 

“Mark that down, Boswell, even if Shakes- 
peare does object to the doctor’s company on the 
Mount of Parnassus. A man of perpetual inspi- 
ration ought to use a fountain pen, but in the 
absence of a point to Johnson’s wit, Demosthenes 
will lend you a pebble.” 

“As I live in a glass hot-house, I never throw 
stones,” gurgled the orator, after a vain effort to 
clear his throat of a pill from the labratory of 
Nature. 

“On earth I always kept a box of bon mots on 
my chimney piece,” put in Sydney Smith. 

“If they had been chocolate bon bons, you 
would have been a sustaining favorite among the 
ladies,” chuckled King Henry the Eighth. 

“Where knowledge of women is concerned, I 
bow to your marital Majesty,” acquiesced Smith. 
“Mere man never becomes a post-graduate on 
femininology, but he can manage to get up a bow- 
ing ^acquaintance with women after he is mar- 
ried to six of them. It seems to me that Utah 
would be a good place to study her ‘of infinite 
variety.’ I have often thought that much of 


OF SINNERS. 


49 

Solomon’s wisdom came from his three hundred 
wives.” 

“With such a match-making father,” I put in, 
my newspaper instinct scenting “copy,” “I have 
often wondered why good Queen Bess never 
married.” 

“I’m sorry Elizabeth didn’t keep up the family 
reputation,” answered the king, “but I guess she 
thought I did marrying enough for the whole 
family. Besides, Bess had her hands full ruling 
the kingdom and her temper without attempting 
to rule a husband. However, I never could un- 
derstand why she turned a deaf ear to Sir Walter’s 
pleading. He wooed her so long with his eyes 
that she asked him one day why he was such a 
mute, inglorious Raleigh. He replied that a beg- 
gar who is dumb should challenge double pity. 
As many another man has done since then, the 
silent lover lost his head over a woman.” 

“That’s the King James version,” retorted 
Sir Walter. “It seems to me that your Majesty 
should confine yourself to rattling the skeletons 
in your own Bluebeard’s closet.” 

“I see you have a sharp tongue to match the 
edge of the axe which brought you to your knees. 
You had a reason for what you did on earth, but 
you lost your reason along with your head when 
you left the upper world. By the shade of Anne 
Boleyn,” went on the king, becoming more and 
more enraged as he proceeded, “were we on earth, 


5o 


THE ASBESTOS SOCIETY 


your insolence should cause you to swing from 
Tyburn’s tree.” 

“You can’t string me up,” sneered Raleigh. 
“No man ever made a monkey of me.” 

“No, but a woman did. You can’t cloak what 
you did for Elizabeth. Now Anne — ” 

“You forget yourself,” angrily interrupted 
Anne Boleyn, who had just come upon the scene. 

“But you won’t allow me to forget you!” rue- 
fully retorted the king. 

“It’s time you came home, Henry. You’ve 
been keeping altogether too late hours at the club 
recently and I’ve come to take you home.” 

“But I had promised to take tea with Catha- 
rine Parr,” rebelled Henry. “You know she is 
rightfully my wife.” 

“Really? You forget that decrees of divorce 
are not binding in Hades, whether they have been 
executed by the hangsman or by the justice.” 

“I appeal to Judge Blackstone.” 

“This is altogether without precedent, but I 
must support the lady,” responded the jurist, 
gallantly. 

“Then take her. Bless you, my children. 
I’ve no hard feelings, Anne. May no decrees of 
court or fate terminate your second union. I’ve 
sampled the wine of her womanhood, Judge, and 
as wine improves with age, it ought to be even 
better now than it was some hundreds of years 
ago.” 


OF SINNERS. 


5i 


“It isn’t every man who would give his wife 
a recommendation,” diplomatically remarked 
Blackstone, alarmed at the construction Henry 
had placed on his gallantry, and noting that Anne 
Boleyn seemed pleased thereby. “I fear, how- 
ever, that Satan would object to any but Lucifer 
matches in Hades, so until you strike brimstone, 
Anne here is still your wife.” 

“How about the others?” groaned Henry. 

“You must settle that with them,” evaded the 
jurist. “I think one wife would be enough for 
me, but as you have made your harem, you can’t 
lie out of it.” 

“Henry!” The tone was threatening. The 
king meekly arose and cast an appealing glance 
at me. 

“I would be delighted to have your company,” 
he said. “In the olden days I should have com- 
manded, but Anne has taken the command from 
me. You know I want you to denounce those 
hysterical novelists who have taken liberties with 
my wives.” 

“I’d like to see them take liberties with me,” 
aggressively brindled madam. 

“They couldn’t do that,” soothingly replied 
his Majesty. “ No, they painted you in your true 
colors: a study in black and white.” 

“Where do you live?” I inquired. 

“On Eighth Avenue, of course,” returned the 
king, as if that were a foregone conclusion. 


52 


THE ASBESTOS SOCIETY 


“Lucifer named and numbered the streets after 
a recent visit to New York. Ward McAllister 
wanted me to live in apartments at Twenty-third 
Street and Fifth Avenue, but the ‘skidoo set’ was 
not exclusive enough for me and I said I would 
live on Eighth Avenue or go back to England. 
Charon wouldn’t listen to that, as he said I had 
given him only a single trip ticket. So I am 
domiciled on Eighth Avenue, which we have now 
reached. Here I live with my six wives.” 

“Six?” I exclaimed, as we entered the royal 
palace. “I thought it was eight wives. Why 
did they call you Henry the Eighth if it were not 
because of the number of your consorts? The 
only thing we Americans know about you is that 
you had more wives than the law allows, and in- 
stituted a church to enable you to get another.” 

“America?” muttered the king. “I don’t re- 
member where that is. Down here, however, 
we refer all questions of geography to Atlas. My 
dear, won’t you ask him to come here if he isn’t 
too weary from carrying on his shoulder the chip 
of a world which no one will knock off.” 

But Her Grace did not move. 

“Your church was instituted too late to be 
binding on me,” she said, her nose becoming an 
acute retrousse. “The word obey didn’t cut 
any figure in our matrimonial contract.” 

“If I once chopped off your head, as the his- 
torians say, you’ve snapped mine off since,” 
grumbled his hen-pecked Majesty. 


OF SINNERS. 


53 


“My head was divorced from my shoulders. I 
should have preferred the courts of law to courting 
the axe.” 

“There! don’t cry or you will cause the carpet 
to mildew. My dear, never try to salt down a 
man’s affections with briny tears.” 

A queenly woman entered the room. I arose 
to greet her. The king’s fat interfered with 
his gallantry; besides, the woman was his wife, 
which explains while it does not justify. 

“My sister and my wife,” said Henry, present- 
ing me to Catharine of Arragon. “It’s the only 
case on record where a woman, after promising 
to be a man’s sister, became his wife. Do you 
wonder that I began to feel quite rich in family 
relations? Although I murdered my sister-in- 
law, I left it to the punsters to murder the mothers- 
in-law who came after me.” 

“The historians say that my fall from kingly 
favor was a matter of conscience,” mused Her 
Grace. “Didn’t the still small voice make itself 
heard when you severed the bonds of matrimony 
with your little hatchet?” 

“ Not at all, Catharine. I left my conscience on 
the executioner’s block to flirt with yours!” 

“And married again!” 

“Of course. Matrimony always had much 
attraction for me, although I realize that a man 
had better fall into the sea than fall in love and 
marry. A corpse devoured by crabs is no less 


54 


THE ASBESTOS SOCIETY 


harrowing than the spectacle of a man devoured 
by love, and it is better to multiply crabs than to 
multiply sinners and fools. Matrimony is a fore- 
taste of purgatory to which no man should be 
called upon to submit before death.” 

“No wonder you got dyspepsia and gout from 
indulging your taste.” 

“There you are again, Anne, throwing ancient 
history in my teeth. Did you ever hear how I got 
rid of the gout ? ” 

I shook my head. 

“Ah, thank goodness, one incident of my life 
has escaped the novelists. Lucifer is compiling 
a mammoth work, ‘Every Man His Own Historian ’ 
to which we are all contributing. It promises to 
to be one of the ‘six best sellers.’ Permit me to 
read a chapter from my autobiography: 

“I must have fallen asleep upon my throne. I 
dreamed that a great iron safe had fallen upon my 
feet and awoke to find a hideous-looking creature 
seated complacently upon my bandaged foot. I 
groaned and tried to shake him off, but he still 
clung there and the weight of his body seemed to 
be pushing red-hot needles into the swollen flesh. 

“He took off his cap with a courtly bow. 

“‘Allow me to introduce myself as Mr. Gout, 
M. D.,’ he said. 

“‘What! you are Mr. Gout, who is responsible 
for my sufferings and you actually have the im- 
pudence to come here! Why, oh my foot!’ 


OF SINNERS. 


55 


“‘Do you know why I am so attentive to you?’ 

“ ‘From pure cussedness, confound you! Ow-oh, 
I wish you would keep your attentions to yourself.’ 

“ ‘That’s the way of the world. A man is indis- 
creet, and when he has to pay the penalty, lays 
the blame on some one else. My duty is to re- 
mind you that you cannot abuse this body with 
impunity.’ 

“The hideous creature began to jump up and 
down on my foot. Maddened by the pain, I 
picked up a heavy dictionary lying near and 
hurled seventy thousand words bound in 
calf at him. The aim was too low and Webster 
fell over my foot. Then I fainted. The Gout 
had gone!” 

“Now that you have disposed of Dr. Gout, let 
us go back to our original subject — women,” I 
said, smiling. “A man who has had six wives 
ought to have some knowledge of the feminine 
character.” 

Just then John Heyward entered. The king 
turned to him. 

“Just in time, fool,” he said. “Answer our 
American friend: What is a woman ? ” 

‘“A rag and a bone and a hank of hair.’ That 
sounds like a before-treatment advertisement, but 
is really original with Kipling. As for myself, 
although a fool, I don’t attempt to designate a 
woman by a descriptive tag, as if she were a spe- 
cial brand of chocolates. To man, woman is a 


THE ASBESTOS SOCIETY 


56 

sphinx endowed with a voice. He never gets more 
than a telephonic acquaintance with her, and the 
woman always hangs up the receiver and monop- 
olizes the transmitter.” 

“Listen to the words of a wise fool who wears 
a dunce cap for a crown,” approved Henry. 
“Right you are, Heyward, and one woman is 
very much like another.” 

“I beg to differ,” said the poet. “Women are 
different, not only in their baptismal labels, but in 
that some women have a husband and others have 
a cat. Women have often been compared to 
cats, but did you ever contrast cats and men? 
Thomas never throws his mother in the face of 
his wife. He keeps his own whiskers trimmed 
and stays home nights. He does not come back 
to the partner of his bosom at three A. M. with a 
diagonal gait and an asinine gayety, chewing the 
butt of a cigar and talking in a tongue that is as 
unsteady as his legs. Nor does Tommy slam 
the door in fourteen languages when Kitty asks 
how that blonde hair came on his coat. But 
we’re all human. If you’re hunting for a perfect 
woman, stop — she’s dead; if for a perfect man, 
you’re a fool. Elijahs are no longer translated 
without being prepared for the undertaker. Yet 
methinks that if one could forget other folks’ 
mistakes as easily as one’s own, there would be 
less scandal.” 0 

He turned to Catharine Parr. 


OF SINNERS. 


57 


“One thing has always puzzled me. Why is 
it that women prefer to be old men’s darlings, 
that you enjoy being clouds in the sunset’s glow 
rather than in the noontide glory ? ” 

“The setting sun always gives a golden lining 
to the clouds it embraces, but to drop the figura- 
tive — we are soaring rather high — and come down 
to earth, women marry old men so that they may 
soon become widows.” 

Henry nervously tried to adjust an imaginary 
crown that weighed heavily on his head. 

“Seymour plucked the weeds from the garden 
of your widowed life before the first blade of grass 
had pushed up from a newly-made grave. O 
Inconstancy! O Woman! Of two things, one. 
Orpheus went to Hell to find his wife. He failed 
to win her from her refuge in the shades because 
he looked back to discern her features. Had 
Euridice retraced the path from Hell without 
bringing with her surcease from domestic woe, 
Orpheus would have wished her back down that 
familiar track. I wish he would pay us another 
visit. I’d loan him five of mine.” 

“Which wife would you retain?” asked Catha- 
rine Howard. 

“Catharine,” answered Henry, diplomatically. 

All three who bore that name beamed with 
gratification. 

“Catharine is always at Parr,” continued the 
king. His fondness for punning nearly proved 
his undoing. 


THE ASBESTOS SOCIETY 


58 


“I’m not below Parr,” angrily exclaimed Catha- 
rine of Arragon. “I come before her.” 

“No, you came,” corrected the king. “It’s 
merely a question of tense. Many a woman 
promises to be a sister to the devil who has never 
received a proposal.” 

“That’s a good one on you!” laughed the fool. 
“Her Grace of Arragon promised to be a sister 
to you ! What do you say to that ? ” 

“My answer is written in history. ‘The Lord 
gave and the Lord hath taken away,’ for which 
' blessed be the name of the Lord.’ I replaced my 
wives, so that the supply would always equal the 
demand. I believed that as long as the Lord took, 
it was my duty to take.” 

The king paused long enough to drink a cup 
of pink tea and to eat some breaded calves’ 
brains for inspiration. 

“When trouble comes,” continued Henry, “ some 
people fly to matrimony, thinking drink too 
vulgar.” 

“Your troubles have been many, judging by 
your marital intemperance.” 

“They were, but my troubles always came 
singly,” chuckled the king. “As fast as I exe- 
cuted one, another came, but I made sure I was 
off with the old head before I coveted the new.” 

“The only bright thing an American can re- 
member to have heard Punch say is ‘ don’t ’ when 
matrimony is on the horizon, but then Punch is 


OF SINNERS. 


59 


English and England has no Ali Ben Theodore — 
peace to his Strenuosity — to turn the throne into 
a pulpit for dissertations on vital statistics in the 
hope that he may make census taking an unneces- 
sary burden of government. Modern philolo- 
gists were seriously considering the advisability of 
eliminating the word ‘papa’ from the dictionary, 
when the leading exponent of the life effective 
raised the question as to why mamma’s lap wasn’t 
filled. When the president becomes advance 
agent for the stork hope is born, but if the stork 
continues to be derelict in its duties, we might 
give the eagle a trial in an endeavor to have this 
statistical indictment set aside.” 

“What does Mr. Roosevelt know about the 
rights of unattached bachelors?” asked Catha- 
rine the Third. “He isn’t a bachelor and never 
was one ; he was born domestic and to the domes- 
tic man nothing ever happens — except the buying 
of more cradles.” 

“A woman’s tongue is as full of sharp points as 
a porcupine,” observed Henry, who was inordi- 
nately fond of epigrammes. “But never mind, 
Kittens, I am the last man in the world who would 
deprive you of woman’s inalienable rights — love, 
license, and the pursuit of man.” 

“Their Majesties are looking well and youth- 
ful,” I said, with a gesture that included all the 
wives of the much-married king. 

“ One never grows any older in Hades,” answered 


6o 


THE ASBESTOS SOCIETY 


Henry. “That explains its attraction for women, 
and why the devil has so many votaries among 
the fair sex!” 

“An exclamation point often hides a pointless 
period. When a man talks epigrammatically 
about woman, it is a sign that he doesn’t under- 
stand her.” 

And being a woman, Catharine Parr had the 
last word. 


WHAT METHUSELAH THINKS OF 
DR. OSLER. 














CHAPTER V. 


What Methuselah 
Thinks of Dr. Osier. 



THAT mine adversary had written 
a book!’” 


“The most miserable man in 
Hades is no longer Job but 
Methuselah,” whispered Anon. 


“ Ever since Dr. Osier celebrated his departure for 
England by proposing a wholesale slaughter of 
the innocent aged, Methuselah has had to take 
a seat on the sinners’ bench. It was formerly 
considered an honor to be an old man, even in 
Hades, but now it is a disgrace not to have died 
young. The other day, Cain, who is the bad 
boy of the underworld, gave Methuselah as a 
birthday present a collection of thirty- six bottles 
of chloroform, one for each sixty years of his 
earthly age. Then the lad, who is Satan’s chief 
imp, put a placard on Methuselah’s back 
reading ‘ Oslerized.’ ” 

“There comes a time in every man’s life when 
he wishes for Herod’s power, that he might order 


63 


64 THE ASBESTOS SOCIETY 

all children killed — except his own!” muttered 
the old man. “But I had my revenge: I was 
Abel to raise Cain over a foot.” 

“Under a spreading chestnut tree, 

The ancient jokesmith lies,” 

hummed Longfellow. 

“That is a prehistoric relic which leaked from 
the Ark when we grounded on Mt. Ararat,” volun- 
teered Noah. “I sprung that ‘raising Cain’ joke 
on Mrs. Noah, but you know a woman has no 
sense of humor and she said she had her hands full 
without working the adoption degree.” 

“ ‘ O, that mine adversary had written a book ! ’ ” 
reiterated Methuselah. 

“He has; your wish is fulfilled.” 

It was a newcomer who spoke. All eyes were 
turned upon him as Methuselah asked: 

“Who are you?” 

“A. Hasbeen, M.D., late secretary of the Os-slurs 
Chloroforming Institute of Baltimore. To-day 
I became a back number — 60 — which entitled 
me to a painless passing, the anaesthetic being 
administered by Dr. Senile. But there was no 
need of the old men getting angry at what Dr. 
Osier said about them. He intended it only for 
advertising purposes. Having got himself talked 
into notoriety, his publishers have announced that 
a book by the doctor is in press.” 


OF SINNERS. 


65 


“Then am I revenged indeed! ^Esthetic as he 
is, Dr. Osier will wish that he had taken an 
anaesthetic before the book reviewers get through 
with him. Oh, for the fatally facile pen of the 
bright and bitter Corelli!” 

“Anthony Trollope says he said it first.” 

“Oh, the idea is itself old enough to be chloro- 
formed,” explained Dr. Hasbeen. “Osier has 
been trying to explain that it was all a jest, but the 
public refuses to take him in earnest: a comedian 
never can become a tragedian. It only goes to 
show that, although Barnum may be right in his 
opinion that the American people like to be fooled, 
they won’t swallow a joke that is thrust down their 
throats and smile over it, and they do not want 
their sense of the ludicrous drugged by an over- 
dose of chloroform.” 

“I may be a member of the silent majority,” 
went on Methuselah, “but this insult to age would 
put speech in the most chapfallen mummy, how- 
ever it might be pressed for time. Notified to 
quit thinking at forty and to stop living at sixty! 
Why, in my day, a man hadn’t cut his wisdom 
tooth then! I’m inclined to think that Dr. Osier 
still has some teeth to cut. Man, like wine, im- 
proves with age. Before making that speech the 
doctor should have put on his old slippers; 
then nobody would have known where the shoe 
pinched him.” 

“J wonder how long it took Osier to sober up 


66 


THE ASBESTOS SOCIETY 


after that intemperate speech? Nobody ever 
heard of him until he approached the danger line 
of encroaching years. What has he been doing 
in the past? Doubtless he is no different from 
the ordinary man, who remains a dormant factor 
until he comes to years of discretion, which is 
more likely to be sixty than sixteen. Before that 
time, he courts women and wine more assidu- 
ously than wisdom and common sense.” 

“A man’s early life is too much taken up with 
breach-of-promise cases, divorces and the stock 
exchange to care whether or not the world owes 
him a living or to take the trouble to collect it. 
Though the financial acumen of Humpty Dumpty 
does not make Wall Street tremble, it tumbles to 
a good thing long before he takes a fall to himself. 
The bears come out of their pits and the bulls 
leave their greenbacks to seek other and greener 
goods to devour.” 

“You know ‘there is no fool like an old fool,’ ” 
I ventured to quote. 

“ ‘Young men think old men are fools; but old 
men know young men are fools’; they’ve been 
there themselves,” retorted Methuselah. 

“It is easy to mould even stubborn facts by ap- 
plying the sparks from the thought anvils of dead 
men’s minds, which the world accepts because 
the men are dead and not because the sparks burn 
with living truth. 

“Proverbs, not men, should be sacrificed on 
the altar of antiquity. 


OF SINNERS. 


67 


‘“At thirty man suspects himself a fool; 

Knows it at forty and reforms his plan.’ ” 

“Thank you, Young,” said Methuselah, grate- 
fully. “Your ‘Night Thoughts’ have shed light 
on a dark subject. Young is older in wisdom than 
his name implies, for a man does not get his mental 
equilibrium until the pendulum is swinging to the 
west, and he becomes too old to wallow in cham- 
pagne or to eat lobster suppers with a peroxide 
blonde. A man’s legs may be in a forced retreat 
to the grave, but his brain remains more active 
in the world’s service than that of the youngster 
under forty, who develops the muscle in his arms 
at the expense of the gray matter in his brain. It 
is only the callow youth who suffers from softening 
of the brain. The man at sixty has more dollars 
in his cellar and more sense in his garret than the 
fool of thirty has cents in his pocket. Yet youth 
and age are not antagonistic; they are like the 
two parts of a pair of scissors in the work of the 
world : ‘ useless each without the other.’ ” 

“Don’t you think that Dr. Osier promulgated 
his theory of earthly eradication at the suggestion 
of a feminine relative?” 

“That would not be surprising. Women are 
apt to see the defects of an aged man of talent and 
the merits of a young fool. It is possible that some 
woman in the Osier family is weary of being an old 
man’s darling and wants to squeeze him out, 
unless he can produce the elixir of Faust,” 


68 


THE ASBESTOS SOCIETY 


“That’s the solution. The women are deter- 
mined to have something to squeeze, even if they 
have to stifle their embraces in chloroform and 
let their affections go to ‘weeds.’ Woman is a 
poppy that exhales her perfume only in the shade. 
It may be that somebody else has said that after 
me, for Osier implies that the oldest inhabitant 
is only a reminiscence of what isn’t so. Who was 
the author, Bartlett?” 

“That is not a ‘Familiar Quotation,’” an- 
swered Bartlett, after a hurried consultation with 
Dr. Johnson and Roget. “Therefore, it must 
belong to Anon; he claims everything to which 
other people cannot prove their title. It seems 
to me that you are getting so independent that 
you even rebel against your metaphors. You 
call woman a fragrant poppy in the shade, in 
apparent ignorance of the fact that in Hades, 
where all women have shady characters, there is 
no perfume. You poets can scent everything 
but the bloom of truth.” 

“Oh, well, you’re not so fragrant,” said Anon, 
slangily. “You only gathered a posie of other 
men’s flowers, while I furnished the thread which 
bound them. But we have lost the thread of this 
discourse. It seems to me that if the lethal cham- 
ber were to become popular, a man would have 
to begin putting his affairs in order almost as soon 
as he had ceased to ask his mother-in-law if he 
might kiss his wife.” 


OF SINNERS. 


69 


“That’s one thing which has struck me as odd,” 
I said. “What particular place of torment has 
been reserved for the mothers-in-law? I haven’t 
seen one since I came to Hades.” 

“Nor are you likely to do so,” chuckled Anon. 
“Mothers-in-law go to Paradise without any 
preliminary probation. Adam had no mother- 
in-law, you know, so he insisted that he wasn’t 
going to put up with any one’s else. Lucifer 
was glad to accede to Adam’s request for banish- 
ing these marital appendages, for he feared that 
if he allowed the mothers-in-law to enter Hades, 
he would be out of a job within twenty-four hours. 
No man ever doubted that his wife’s mother 
could outpoint the devil.” 

I glanced in alarm at Dr. Roget, who appeared 
to be choking, but soon I discovered that he was 
merely swallowing half a dozen pages of his 
“Thesaurus” preparatory to communicating his 
ideas to us. He spoke slowly, biting off a word, 
chewing it until it was thoroughly digested, and 
then spitting it forth with the retort of a verbal 
bomb. His speech lasted as long as the paper 
held out, which he later explained by saying that 
he never could speak without notes . 

“If the world knew that the mother-in-law is 
a rarer bird in Hades than a political blackbird 
hanging over both sides of the fence under the 
plum tree, the earth would be depopulated faster 
by that news than by the Osierized process. 


70 


THE ASBESTOS SOCIETY 


Charon would have to charter all the world’s 
warships for transports and each man in Hades 
would have to make a jack o’ lantern of his skull 
to prevent being run down by the crowd of on- 
rushing shades. Hades would no longer be a 
country of suburban cottages but a Hell of Harlem 
flats.” 

“We are wandering farther away from the sub- 
ject under discussion than any convention of 
preachers I ever knew,” said David. “Isn’t it 
about time we had a text? I would suggest: 
‘And Saul took the sword and fell upon it.’” 

“You see I didn’t have Dr. Osier for a medical 
adviser,” explained Saul. “In my day, when 
we wanted to shorten the duration of our stay on 
that planet called the earth, we cut it. Methinks 
an opiate would have deadened the edge of the 
sword when I walked the plank.” 

“ Dr. Osier has gone me one better,” said David. 
“He has revised the Psalms to read: The days 
of a man are two score years, and if, by reason of 
any extraordinary fund of vitality, he shall linger 
around until he is three score without the ten, he 
had better get a hustle on and remove himself, 
for he is in the way of some one else.” 

“Like an emetic, one thing brings up another,” 
put in Methuselah, anxious to throw up his griev- 
ance. “Having told us it is one’s duty to dismiss 
himself from the world, this authority very kindly 
suggested that a particular anaesthetic would be 


OF SINNERS. 


7i 


the best means for one’s transfer out of time. The 
edict has gone forth: All out at sixty. When 
the census- taker makes his rounds, he will say: 
‘Age, if you please? Sixty? Kindly step into 
the asphyxiation chamber or into the ambulance 
where you will find a bottle awaiting you. Good- 
night’. Night, when deep sleep falleth upon man, 
has come too early. When a babe, he smelleth 
the bottle afar off and lo! children cry for the 
soothing syrup which the man would fain put 
away. Before his eye is dimmed by the sunset 
glow, the light of his life is quenched in four ounces 
of chloroform. 

“According to this medical expert,” continued 
Methuselah, “when a man proposes to celebrate 
his sixtieth birthday by emigrating beyond the 
Styx, he is to buy a ticket and pay for it with 
poison or pistol. He is then fit only for the doctor 
and the refuse heap. Has it come to this? No 
twentieth century painless surgery for me, thank 
you. Long life is no longer a thing to long for. 
I would prefer to be kissed not by the dews of 
night but by the salutation of the glorious morn- 
ing.” 

“‘Rejoice, O young man, in thy youth,’” ex- 
claimed Solomon, who still the wisest of men, had 
hitherto kept silent. He was addressing Methu- 
selah. “One may no longer tarry until his beard 
is grown and his hair is dyed. No longer may 
he come to his grave in a full age like as a shock 


72 


THE ASBESTOS SOCIETY 


of corn cometh in his season, and though it may 
go against the grain, the Grim Reaper stalks 
through the field, stopping up the ears with Osier’s 
Death Drugs.” 

“The doctor is an homeopathist,” observed 
Sherlock Holmes, in a tone so decided that it left 
no question for argument. 

“I’m not Watson,” I responded, “but of course 
I know you want some one to ask you how you 
know. Just to be accommodating, allow me to 
inquire how you can tell that Dr. Osier is an hom- 
eopathist when you haven’t even the ashes of his 
cigar to analyze ? Do you mean because of small 
doses ? ” 

“No; like cures like. Old men being a drug 
on the market, it takes a drug to remove them. 
Had he consulted me I would have recommended 
cocaine instead of chloroform.” 

“Do you think that Dr. Osier will take his own 
medicine when the frost is on the temples and the 
anaesthetic’s handy?” 

“Doctors never do. That may be because of 
professional etiquette, but it is more likely that 
the physicians recognize the truth of the saying 
about self-preservation being the first law of 
nature. Some doctors are so conscientious that 
they would rather be murdered by another phy- 
sician than commit suicide themselves. You may 
depend upon it that there is no chloroform in 
Dr. Osier’s family medicine chest; he keeps it 
only for his patients!” 


















































































• ' 











































































































THE VIRGIN THRONED IN THE 
WEST: A TABLOID TANGLE OF 
LOVE AND HISTORY. 



CHAPTER VI. 


The Virgin Throned in 
the West: A Tabloid 
Tangle of Love and 
History. 

I T was with no little trepidation that I mounted 
the steps of the summer palace of Her 
Majesty, Queen Elizabeth, and knocked 
timidly at the door. Had I not been some- 
what dazed by the nature of my mission, 
I might have noticed an electric bell somewhere 
around, but who ever heard of a bell on a palace 
door? That would be in violation of all ethics 
of the made-to-order novel. I had determined to 
see nothing but what I wished to see and to brush 
the dust from my knowledge of royalty — gleaned 
from the historical novels which tell of every- 
thing under the sun except history — so I bridled 
my patience and gave my imagination a free rein. 
That’s a hobby of mine. 

As I closed my eyes and waited with an 


75 


76 


THE ASBESTOS SOCIETY 


unuttered prayer that there might be no dungeon 
beneath this castle wall, I felt a queer sensation 
in my left side. Twice before I had undergone 
a similar experience. Once I had called an im- 
perious maiden “my queen” and the lover who is 
in the background of every girl butted into the 
foreground and knocked me out of the centre of 
the stage. The other occasion is too painful to 
recall and not at all humorous, so I will lose the 
thread of memory and resume the thread of my 
discourse. 

I believe I left myself on the palace portico, 
with my hands clasped over the hollow place 
caused by a missing rib, which is the only legacy 
left by an ancestor who was too fond of stolen 
pippins. Since then I have become convinced 
that the ache was owing to an uneasy conscience; 
but then I thought it was only my heart. Out- 
side the palace I had one kind of heart disease; 
would I contract the other kind within the walls 
I had forgotten that it takes two to make a con- 
tract and had reckoned without my queen and 
with an utter disregard of the rules of mathema- 
tics. But there are exceptions to rules; why not 
to rulers? 

I continued to stand outside the palace. Per- 
haps you wonder at that, but the reason is simple : 
the door was closed and, moreover, it was locked. 
I am no Sherlock Holmes, nor do I smoke, so I 
couldn’t deduce from the ashes of a cigar how I 


OF SINNERS. 


77 

could get that door between me and the street. 
There was nothing to do but wait. 

And wait I did. Somehow, I didn’t mind it, 
for you see I was waiting on a queen. I had waited 
on other girls with more impatience and more 
candied sweetness. Every woman’s idea of a 
sensible man is one who will make a fool of him- 
self over her and if it pleases her, he doesn’t ob- 
ject to playing court jester. That’s what we men 
are here for — to prevent women from being bored 
by the society of their own sex. 

Finally I was admitted. Just how I seem to 
have forgotten. Let me recall my lessons in 
memory-training-by-the-aid-of association : 

Rule one is to begin at the beginning. Eve 
began it; she added Adam; united they stood: 
over an apple paring they fell; that’s it — I took 
a tumble to myself, which is neither slang nor 
a figure of speech. I had been leaning against 
the door, and as my spirits grew more heavy, it 
was more than the door hinged on. We parted 
company and as I lay upon the floor I felt quite 
prostrated over it. I lost my dignity and my 
watch; then I lost my time but not my temper, 
although I had fallen into a compost of lime and 
sand left as a trap by one of the palace workmen. 

‘‘Are you hurt?” inquired a man-of-arms, as I 
picked myself out of the mortar. 

“ Oh, no,” I answered, the ready tears starting 
sympathetically. “I’m not hurt but I feel rather 
mortified!” 


7 8 


THE ASBESTOS SOCIETY 


When I told the man in waiting that I had 
come to see the queen, he looked doubtful and 
made a half audible remark about somebody 
rushing in and about downtrodden angels. It was 
an unfamiliar quotation and as I had no copy of 
Bartlett’s handy, I did not take his “posie of 
other men’s flowers” to myself. Had there been 
any stairs on which to fight I might have emu- 
lated the ‘‘gentleman of France,” but I come 
from another country where elevators have killed 
romance as well as other things. 

Another wait. I still smarted from contact 
with the lime, and feeling a humiliating sense of 
my own unworthiness, I meekly made myself 
small. When She entered I began to shrivel until 
I felt like unleaded agate after being thrown 
into the “hell box.” 

Good Queen Bess is every inch a queen, even 
to her feet. “Sweet and twenty” she was — at 
one time; I can vouch for the qualifying adjec- 
tive, if not for the noun, and to be sweet is better 
than to be queen, for to be queen it is only neces- 
sary to be born beneath a canopy embroidered 
with the regal R. Although I thought of Shakes- 
peare’s phrase, I did not give utterance to the 
invitation which preceded it; you recollect the 
line: “Then come kiss me, sweet and twenty.” 

It isn’t given to every man to be as bold as 
Shakespeare, even though he may be more alive 
to present opportunities. 


OF SINNERS. 


79 


Now, according to court etiquette, a subject 
dare not address his sovereign until he is spoken 
to, so I simply stood and looked unutterable 
ihings. Her gaze fell. The pause was becom- 
ing embarrassing. 

“Well,” she said finally. 

That wasn’t what I had expected at all. All 
the books I had ever read about queens had 
quoted the ruler thusly: “Her Majesty is grac- 
iously pleased to incline her ear that she may hear 
the prayer of her servant.” I noticed that her 
ears kept their normal position, but I was not 
inclined to be fastidious: the queen had spoken! 

My lips being now unlocked, I told who I was. 

“Oh, to be sure,” Her Grace said, with ready 
recollection. “You are the novelist who said so 
many nice things about me in ‘The Virgin 
Throned in the West.’ You possess the first 
requisite of a courtier: a knowledge of the gentle 
art of flattery. Your compliments — ” 

“Spare me, good Queen,” I interrupted. “I 
must confess that I wrote that eulogy before I 
had seen your Majesty.” 

The queen frowned just a little. 

“Why need you have said that?” she asked. 
“Even an immortal queen is enough like her 
mortal sisters not to relish a stab at vanity. You 
men praise us women and then ruffle our hair by 
saying you didn’t mean it. Of course, we forgive 
you, but to forget is not so easy. Under the scar, 
the wound still aches.” 


8o 


THE ASBESTOS SOCIETY 


Ever since then I have believed that a man 
should be arrested for exposing the naked truth. 

“In that book you also paid tender tribute to 
the babies, though I fail to see what they have to 
do with an old maid queen who achieved fame 
but not matrimony. Let us hope that tribute, 
at least, is sincere.” 

“No, only sentimental. I wrote that eulogy 
far from the maddening child, with naught but 
memory to lend wings to the imagination. I love 
to play with other people’s toddling darlings 
until there is a cry of distress from the interior 
department, in which case distance lends enchant- 
ment to the point of view. I have not always 
said nice things about babies, for, as I heard 
Methuselah say, there comes a time in the life of 
every man when he sighs for the power of Herod 
that he might order all children killed. Methuse- 
lah excepted his own; I don’t.” 

‘ ‘That is cruel,” Her Serenity observed. 

“I crave Your Grace’s pardon,” I disagreed; 
“ it is true : that is all.” 

“Truth never masquerades in the domino of 
drollity.” 

“Thy reproof, O Queen, is deserved. Would 
that I were Boswell to preserve in the amber of 
biography the gems which fall from the lips of a 
Doctress Johnson.” 

“Scribe, know you not that a woman would 
rather you praised her face than her mind, and her 


OF SINNERS. 


81 


bonnet rather than her ‘blue stockings’? Why 
write what you don’t believe?” 

“Had my eyes been gladdened by the sight of 
your charms, fair Queen,” I boldly asserted, “I 
should have thrown off the fetters of prose and 
soared to the Mount of Parnassus, there to coronate 
you in verse with feet iambic.” 

“Perhaps the feet might limp — I mean they 
would, of course, be limpidly lyrical. But my 
poet laureate, don’t metrically measure My 
Majesty. Cork the rythmic bottle and all shall 
be forgiven. And now you may tell me your 
mission.” 

“I’ve come to interview you,” I blurted out, 
instinctively putting my hand on my vest pocket, in 
which was a bottle of aromatic spirits of ammonia. 
But Her Grace has a spirit of her own and needed 
none of mine. There was no evidence of vertigo. 

“ Don’t be alarmed,” I hastened to say. It was 
a needless assurance, but according to all prece- 
dent, I was expected to make the observation. 
“I wrote the interview before I came down here 
to see you, and it is now in type with a turn rule 
at the end for fear it should not measure up to 
expectations. This call is a mere matter of form.” 

“But how”— 

“That’s a secret. Instead of answering your 
question, allow me to ask you another. Suppose 
you were again an earthly ruler with unlimited 
power, what would you do ? ” 


82 


THE ASBESTOS SOCIETY 


“I hardly know,” she confessed naively and 
added: “But I think my first move would be 
to curb the freedom of the press by pensioning 
off all the newspaper men, so that we celebrities 
might have our fanciful fads without being inter- 
viewed. Not that I object to the interview or to 
the interviewer. ‘Truth is stranger than fiction’ 
— to most men.” 

“And fiction is more interesting than truth and 
much more believable — to most women,” I re- 
torted. “You know Heine says that woman is 
at once apple and serpent. I have never dissented 
fronp. that view, for apple sass and serpents’ 
tongues have always been the desserts woman 
serves up toman. Eve plucked the first fruit from 
the forbidden tree, but many another fair hand 
has since robbed the genealogical orchard. Thus 
do we ape our ancestors.” 

“Poor Eve!” sympathized the queen. “Her 
daughters have often taken a bite of the enticing 
apple, but unlike their mother, it does not open 
their eyes to man’s true nature.” 

“I have often wondered,” I went on, not heed- 
ing the amused smile of her Majesty, “why God 
didn’t make a dozen women instead of one out of 
Adam’s rib, but I’ve come to the conclusion that 
Eden would no longer have been Paradise to 
Eve if she had had a rival.” 

“Where is man’s boasted chivalry?” suddenly 
asked Elizabeth. “Sir Walter never struck a 
woman with the whip of sarcasm.” 


OF SINNERS. 83 

“ With his cloak wrapped about her, she couldn’t 
feel the sting of satire,” I retorted. 

“Did you ever hear how I repaid Sir Walter 
for his gallantry? We had gone to London to 
attend the coronation of King Edward the Seventh. 
One of the streets we had to cross was so muddy 
that we paused in dismay. A newsboy brushed 
up against me. Taking the papers from under 
his arm I tossed them into the street. ” 

“‘Tut! tut! keep on your coat, Sir Walter,’ I 
said. “ ‘Allow me to pilot you to yonder pavement 
dryshod.’ ” 

“‘Who says that chivalry is dead?’ quoth 
Sir Walter. 

“ ‘Am I not dead?’ ” I asked. 

“‘Good Queen Bess will never die,’ responded 
the baronet, with ready wit. Then he laughed 
as the newsboy picked up his papers from the 
muddy street, loudly bewailing the prank of the 
wind which had spoiled his stock in trade.” 

Elizabeth again did violence to my conceptions 
of royalty by laughing at her own wit; then she 
said: 

“Sir Scribe, it seems to me that you haven’t 
progressed well with your interview. You haven’t 
once indulged in those misfit personalities which 
bring your American papers so many libel suits. 
When I received your card I anticipated that I 
should be discussed by myself and dissected by 
you. I expected you would be concerned as to 


§4 


THE ASBESTOS SOCIETY 


whether my ancestors belonged to that little com- 
pany of gentlemen who jumped from tree to tree 
in Africa and was prepared to tell you, as I have 
told Darwin, that even a baboon can have a re- 
spectable daughter!” 

Being a blue point is not conductive to success- 
ful interviewing, so I shook off my lethargy and 
asked as to her favorite flower. 

“That is better,” approved her Grace. “I 
have two favorites — bachelors’ buttons and mock 
orange blossoms.” 

“If not yourself, who would you rather be?” 

“The author of one of the six ‘best sellers.’” 

“Who is your favorite character in history?” 

“I really must decline to answer.” 

I did not press the point, for one naturally looks 
for modesty in a Virgin Queen. 

“Do you mind telling me in what epoch you 
would have chosen to live?” 

“The reign of Terrible Teddy, by all means. 
Hesiod says there are five ages of the world; how 
is yours designated: golden, brazen, or — ?” 

“This is the age of folly — the folly of flesh,” 
I answered. “Higher critics deny the decalogue 
and bone Jonah’s fish until it resembles an eel. 
Even our modern writers play ping pong with 
hearts and the seventh commandment, for to 
them love is nothing unless it brings in ten per 
cent royalty. Society has become sensuous; we 
are having rather too much of the body. The 


OF SINNERS. 


85 


corsage serves no purpose but to hide the heart; 
bosom and back are bared before the footlights 
while gartered grace trips tantalizingly in the lime- 
light. Soul has sunk beneath the seductions of 
the senses. The demon of desire so entices men 
that for the amorous allurement of Kipling’s 
Vampire — the woman who did not care — they 
would go to Hell and consider the trip an enjoya- 
ble excursion. Has virtue fled to hide its blushes 
in a nunnery and is there no longer a shrine of 
sex? Is ‘Don Juan’ to be deified and ‘Camille’ 
to be glorified ? Will — but in deference to Colonel 
Comstock, I really must desist.” 

“Wherefore so pessimistic — jaundiced or jilted ?” 

“More likely I’m dyspeptic.” 

“Don’t deny it; a lost love is the only justifica- 
tion of a man’s being a misanthropist and a 
misogynist.” 

“Won’t you kindly translate or at least tell me 
the language? Emerson always was a voiceless 
sphinx to me and foreign tongues are not articulate 
to ears deafened by the slang of the streets.” 

“Don’t be silly! Your idiomatic Americanisms 
make muddy the well of English undefiled, but 
methinks the water is the clearer and the more 
sparkling after each stirring up. 

“If you will promise no more interruptions, I 
will continue my lecture: Your eyes are too far 
gazing into the bygone to know to-day’s bliss or to 
foresee a confident tomorrow. You are forgetting 


86 


THE ASBESTOS SOCIETY 


that while life roots in the past, it flowers in 
the present. To never exchange loving glances 
with the maiden of the moment, but to dishonor 
the day by looking off into the eyes of some dream 
darling who cannot come to your bosom is like 
another Enoch Arden’s hopeless gaze for a sail 
that never brings him again to the kisses of Annie 
Lee. If I mistake not, your name is a patent of 
your English ancestry, but without that leaf from 
your family tree, I should recognize you as a 
countryman; to be loyal to a sweetheart clasped 
and lost is possible only to the man whose cradle 
rocked between the English Channel and the Irish 
Sea. The Anglo-Saxon alone of all peoples can 
become a martyr to a memory.” 

Whatever will power I possessed was necessary 
to keep my eyes away from the “maiden of the 
moment.” English blood may be phlegmatic 
enough to turn into ice water, but a twenty- years’ 
acquaintance with American girls will thaw the 
most frozen cardiac organ and render it suscepti- 
ble to the wiles of any witch of a woman who in 
other days might have hanged at Salem. Eliza- 
beth’s very voice was a caress and sometimes a man 
forgets to pray, “Lead me not into temptation!” 

“The sweeter memories are in themselves,” 
I murmured, “the more loth one is to share them 
with another. If it please Your Grace, we won’t dis- 
cuss the — the ‘other girl.’ When a man proposes 
and the woman disposes of him by a verbal spank- 
ing, sending him away, it may be to theembraces 


OF SINNERS. 


87 


of another girl, it may be to cherish a memory, 
he is seldom in a frame of mind inculcated by 
gospel precepts. Gratitude comes later. Yet 
whether a man marries or whether he remains true 
to his ideal, he never loves any other woman 
quite so much as she who was pitiless to his plead- 
ing. Man’s heart is not like a Manhattan hall 
room with space for only one pair of shoes under 
the bed, but it is a St. Regis, in which there are no 
vacant guest chambers. The cosiest corner of a 
man’s heart is always reserved for the woman 
who has refused his hand.” 

Her Majesty threw up her hands in a pretty 
gesture of mock dismay. 

“A misogamist also! I am just dying with 
curiosity to know what terrible things my sex have 
done to you to make you a hater of men, of women 
and of marriage. Because some sunflower of a 
girl has turned her face to another son is no ex- 
cuse for you to sulk behind a cloud. This may 
be the age of folly, as you claim, but don’t you 
think that the greatest fool is he who allows a slip 
of a girl to rob him of his couleur de rose spectacles ? 
Come now, ’fess up ! Aren’t you making a hobby 
of being a hypochondriac ? If you linger among 
the graves of the gloaming with a heart so full of 
shadows and eyes so abrim with tears that you 
cannot see beauty as it is born, you corrupt the 
present. If you fellowship with to-day, it will 
bestow upon you its purple. If you bid away 


88 


THE ASBESTOS SOCIETY 


the hour that is here to make you happy, all the 
grief of Niobe will not win it back again. To-day 
is a nomad who tarries awhile, then folds his tent 
and whistles away on his happy gypsy journey, 
never to return.” 

“Aren’t we getting rather too philosophical for 
actors in an opera boufje and too solemn for char- 
acters in an hysterical novel; nobody takes history 
seriously nowadays. This is the hour of hyper- 
bole as well as the age of folly and my indictment 
of fleshly fools should be taken cum grano salis. 
I am not so wrapped about by the despairs of 
night that I can get no glimpse of the dawn. I 
despise not the outward beauty, nor do I put con- 
tempt upon flesh nor call it unclean. I wield no 
surgeon’s scalpel to dissect desires which passion 
into degeneracy. Yet I deplore that man, 
who may stature divinely great, should stoop to 
crucify the mystery of the flesh in permitting the 
sanctities of the soul to be overshadowed by sen- 
suality, in making vulgar that which should be 
hallowed. Yet humanity is no windfall apple; 
despite the blemishes on the rind, the core con- 
tinues sound. However pessimistic a man may 
be, he must acknowledge that the influence of 
virtue is more far reaching than the contagion of 
vice. Jean Valjean in the Paris sewer was the 
optimist who originated the New Thought move- 
ment; like him, I feel instinctively that some- 
where beyond the present darkness is the sun- 
shine of life and safety.” 


OF SINNERS. 89 

“It seems to me, sirrah, that you are rather in- 
consistent.” 

“You women have enjoyed a monopoly of that 
comfortable privilege altogether too long, and the 
time has come when man can dispute your prerog- 
ative.” 

The asbestos tablets I had brought with me 
were rapidly being filled with hieroglyphics which 
looked like the original Greek and to understand 
them needed an acquaintance with Pitman; I 
must economize on my questions. 

“The one indispensable interrogation in an 
interview is how you spend each waking moment 
of the day,” I hinted. “No post-mortem recol- 
lections would be complete without that.” 

“To be a queen is to lead the life effective as 
well as the life strenuous. This is one day’s 
doings in the role of Regina, as ticked off by the 
hours — figuratively, of course, for you are aware 
that there are no clocks in Hades: 

“10 A. M. — ‘Good morning.’ 

“n A. M. — Sampling new breakfast foods. 

“12 M. — Reading the Cimmerian Chatterbox 
and the Stygian Smart Set. 

“1 P. M. — Writing autographs to be auctioned 
off at New York sales rooms. 

“2 P. M. — Dinner. 

“3 P. M. — Yachting on the Styx. 

“4 P. M. — Sixty minutes with Her Majesty’s 
diary. 


90 


THE ASBESTOS SOCIETY 


“5 P. M. — Dictating an historical novel to Sir 
Isaac Pitman. 

“ By-the-bye,” she broke off suddenly, “Sir 
Isaac has become afflicted with writers’ cramp 
and I need someone to take his place. You are 
that someone.” 

I knelt, expecting to feel the flat end of a sword 
laid upon me, but her Grace simply twined a lock 
of my blonde hair around her finger. 

“Arise, Sir Scribe,” she said, glancing around 
apprehensively. “Your attitude is that of a 
lover proposing to his mistress, and as a penalty 
for posing in the upper world, Mephisto has de- 
creed that whatever attitude a man assumes in 
Hades, he must set it to words or to music. I am 
going to be merciful and you may make of your 
proposal a frayed-out phonograph record which 
will repeat ‘I love you’ without variation. The 
warmth of your protestations may melt the wax ? 
You need have no fear of that. You would be 
more likely to break the record; we do not use 
wax cylinders, but rubber. As for making you 
my official scribe, the touch of royalty is sufficient 
to confer knighthood. Since poor Walter took 
that ‘sharp remedy’ for all diseases, I have 
shunned the sword.” 

Curiosity is my besetting sin — it is by no means 
a woman’s prerogative — and as it has been one 
of my fads to read a person’s character by a 
glance at his or her hands, I bowed in humble 


OF SINNERS. 


9i 


gratitude at the honor conferred upon me, but 
not without an upward look at the fair hand 
poised gracefully above me. That fleeting glance 
told me much. Certain chroniclers of the period 
Before Darwin tell us that marks were made on 
the hands of men — and women? — that the sons 
of men might know them. As the passage occurs 
in Job, some higher critics interpret the marks to 
mean boils, but we palmists know better. Palmis- 
try is Cupid masquerading in a scientific costume ; 
it gives a man a valid excuse for holding a girl’s 
hand. Of course even a scribe can’t take such 
liberties with a queen, although the cunning of 
chiromancy prompted me to attempt a revelation 
of Her Majesty’s character. Just what I found 
in the hand that swayed the destinies of the world 
She made me promise not to tell. “God save 
the Queen — ” and the Gentle Reader! 

After detailing her destiny, I arose with a mut- 
tered apology for consuming so much of her 
time. 

“It isn’t only time that is consumed in Hades, 
but if you wish to go, you may,” assented Her 
Grace. “I never argue with a bored sign post 
about the distance to the street.” 

I bowed and left. Outside was a sign which 
read: “To New York — twenty miles.” I stood 
a moment and pondered. Twenty miles ex- 
pressed a nearness which made Hades a suburb 
of the metropolis! The call of the city was 


92 


THE ASBESTOS SOCIETY 


insistent, the lure of Broadway beckoned to the 
white lights and the clang of trolleys, but all 
about me were unfolding the wonders of the un- 
known Stygian country. I did not dispute the 
distance, nor did I heed the mute command. I 
simply turned my back on the sign post 
and walked away from the imperative pointing 
finger. 


“BOSS” TWEED ON TAINTED 
MONEY, WITH SOME NONSENSE 
DEFINITIONS OF FADS 
AND FINANCE. 










» 


CHAPTER.VII. 

“Boss” Tweed on 
Tainted Money, with 
Some Nonsense Defi- 
nitions of Fads and 
Finance. 

T HE Asbestos Society of Sinners was in 
session. The subject of debate was, 
“Resolved that gold may be yellow, 
but it is not tainted.” 

“‘An Englishman’s hell is want of 
money,’ ” mused Carlyle, repeating what he had 
said while a denizen of earth. 

“It’s too bad he gets Hades in both the upper 
and lower worlds,” observed “Boss” Tweed, 
who as the reincarnated Dives handled the gavel. 
“Unfortunately, that condition is not confined 
to any one country. Wendell Phillips once said 
that if an American saw a silver dollar on the 
other side of Hell he would jump for it.” 


95 


96 THE ASBESTOS SOCIETY 


“Is that why you came here?” asked he whose 
only claim to fame was that an ass had spoken 
to him. 

“Baalam’s itchy palm spoiled him for a pro- 
phet,” observed Tweed, addressing the chairman, 
and ignoring that individual. “No, gentlemen, 
it wasn’t one dollar that brought me here. It 
was $10,000,000 or $100,000,000; I forget which.” 

“A cypher more or less makes no difference,” 
put in Carlyle, cynically. He evidently thought 
this a side-splitting English joke, for he laughed 
at his own wit. 

“That depends whether there is a point back 
of it,” asserted Dr. Johnson. 

“Truly these be tainted times, if we can place 
any dependence in the New York correspondence 
of the Cimmerian Chatterbox,” volunteered 
Tweed. “Poor Diagones has had to give up his 
quest for an honest man: not being in the trust, 
he cannot buy any oil for his lantern. But even 
a searchlight wouldn’t help him in these days. 
An honest man never gets within the rays of the 
calcium; he is too busy picking the pockets of 
the people.” 

“Oil and money will come uppermost at last 
in the caldron of watered stocks underneath which 
are the fires of Hell, for both are Standard.” 

“I don’t see how tainted money can be made 
from refined oil.” It was Solomon the wise who 
spoke. 


OF SINNERS. 


97 


“Tainted money, like crude oil, may be re- 
fined, ” asserted Tweed. “Yet even crude oil 
is not to be despised, for it accrues interest and 
some of the taint can be carbolized by sending 
bad rum to the heathen. It matters not what 
denomination tainted money is in, although the 
Baptists ought to be able to wash some of the 
taint away. In to-day’s issue of the Stygian 
Siftings, I read that a certain sect who won’t 
trust any other denomination to read their Bible 
for them, say that the pilfered pelf of frenzied 
financiers is all right if it be used for good 
purposes. It isn’t even necessary to keep the 
dirty dough in a separate flour barrel from the 
certified wheat ; they are willing to convert tares 
and all into breakfast food. It resolves itself 
into a case of homoeopathic treatment — the use 
of tainted money to remove a greater taint.” 

“Bribery, which in evening dress is called graft, 
has become such a popular pastime that the re- 
fusal of a man to touch money offered him leads 
one to the conclusion that it is not tainted but 
merely counterfeit,” said Shylock, as he tried to 
hide some degraded ducats in his blouse. “They 
wouldn’t let me shed one drop of blood, yet to-day 
the American capitalist gets his pound of flesh by 
bleeding the people.” 

“ It’s a wonder Atlas wasn’t exposed for holding 
up the earth,” mused Anon. “ Since the days of 
the gods, many a man has had his shoulder put 


98 THE ASBESTOS SOCIETY 


out of joint trying to do the same stunt, but the 
weight of the world is still cause for worry.” 

“So deep-rooted in the universe is graft,” 
asserted Tweed, “that the chairman of an inves- 
tigating committee, in making his report, went 
to the Jersey shore and looking out to sea, wrote : 
‘I can see no graft.’ Even then he forgot the 
ship-building trust and also overlooked the unim- 
portant fact that his very words were grafted from 
Lord Nelson.” 

“Who was the first grafter?” 

“Adam would have been had he been tempted 
with a plum instead of with an apple.” 

“Graft,” explained Noah, sumamed Webster, 
“is a botanical term for ‘splitting straws’ in the 
garden politic. Its principal fruits are plums, 
leafing out in Tong green.’ A grafter is a captain 
of industry who has been found out.” 

“All men bow to the despotism of the dollar,” 
said a well-known anarchist with an unforgiv- 
able name. “It is no longer the divine right of 
kingship, but the divine right of dollarship, to 
rule the earth. The rulers of old had their armies 
and forced obedience; the rulers of to-day have 
their money bags and buy it.” 

“The dollar,” declared Alexander Hamilton, 
“is the corner stone of our egotistic civilization, 
and the dollar is terribly hard. Its hardness may 
make it better as a corner-stone but does not es- 
pecially fit it for use as a pillow for tired human- 
ity.” 


OF SINNERS. 


99 


“ Growing socialistic, eh ? My dear Alexander, 
you have been exclusive owner of six feet of land 
long enough to be cured of that fanciful fad.” 

“Fads,” interposed Worcester, noting that 
Webster was. ready with a definition and anxious 
to forestall him, “is a diversion of the wealthy 
and the only game on which Parker Brothers 
have no copyright. It is played similar to ‘Pit’ 
and ‘Bluff,’ although it is not confined to Wall 
Street.” 

“Fancies,” declaimed Johnson, “is a vivid im- 
agination diluted with printers’ ink for the pur- 
pose of converting the skeleton in the family flat 
into $1,500 cash. Usually the man who has 
ancestors doesn’t court investigation.” 

“Investigation,” defined Roget, “is a popular 
kind of bookkeeping begun after the race is lost 
and the money is spent; a locking of the safe 
deposit doors after the deposits are safe in the 
cashier’s pocket. As the sins of the fathers are 
visited upon the children, Adam, being fatherless, 
is the only man in Hades whom the Stygian 
Insurance Company would guarantee immune 
from the epidemic of investigation which has been 
transplanted from the upper to the lower world. 
But even Adam suffered exposure before he 
plucked the ‘long green’ from the fig tree.” 

“In England insurance is called assurance, 
but the name better applies to American direc- 
tors, whom it assures a life of luxury. The policy 

tore. 


IOO 


THE ASBESTOS SOCIETY 


holder believes insurance is a legacy, but his 
widow discovers it is a law suit. Life insurance 
is a bogie at which everybody not in a glass coffin 
throws a stone. It is old, tried and true: too old 
to notice you after you’re dead; true — to its 
officers; and tried— in the courts. It makes 
sick loans which have the effect of paralyzing the 
tongues of its officials or sending them to Europe 
in search of health.” 

“Knowledge is no longer power,” denied Web- 
ster; “wealth has taken its place. Even both 
ends of Wall Street can be made to meet. At one 
end is the aspiring finger of Trinity Church, point- 
ing to the sky, and at its foot is a cemetery. At 
the other end is the first station on the road to 
Brooklyn and — another cemetery!” 

“Gold itself is pure,” observed Portia, LL.D.; 
“it becomes defiled only in passing through dirty 
fingers. Tainted money may be exchanged for 
gold that isn’t greasy at the mint and no questions 
asked. The filth from the bad man’s fingers 
doesn’t take away the value of the larcenous 
long green, or of the sullied silver.” 

“In my time,” said Tweed, “we didn’t ask 
whether money was tainted before we took it. 
There’s time enough for an investigation after 
the trust treasure is spent, and suspicious specie 
never becomes penitential pesos until after money 
has ceased to talk. Riches are promised to the 
righteous man — which we all are until the news- 
papers find us out. Every millionaire secured 


OF SINNERS. 


IOI 


his wealth honestly with two exceptions, neither 
of which are noted in the newspapers.” 

“You know it is said,” observed Caesar, “that 
it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a 
needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom 
of heaven.” 

“If that includes Cleopatra’s needle, there is 
still hope for the rich man,” put in Marc Antony. 

“A note of protest won’t pay your debts, so 
what’s the use of all this outcry about oppro- 
brious opulence ? ” asked Tweed. “ Who can scent 
from afar the possibilities of graft quicker than 
the man who is counting up his censurable coin ? 
Among the crowd in full cry after a fleeing burglar 
with his pockets full of soiled silver, none shouts 
‘stop thief’ more lustily than the pal who did not 
get his share of the plunder. In the rustle of the 
competitor’s greenbacks which are tainted with 
the tears of women and the blood of men, no 
capitalist hears the cry of the widow and orphan 
more quickly than he who is seeking to shear the 
fleece of an innocent and confiding lot of lambs 
swallowed in the vortex of frenzied finance. 

“How about the tainted tricks of politics?” 
I asked. “I might have been a politician myself 
if I hadn’t been converted and so became a news- 
paper man instead.” 

“Your position is now more hopeless than ever, 
for you not only know all the tricks of the politi- 
cian, but those of the newspaper man as well,” 
retaliated Tweed. 


102 


THE ASBESTOS SOCIETY 


“Money, the devil’s pass key, has securely 
locked more than one skeleton safely away in the 
family closet,” I continued. “After all, we can’t 
get along without the disreputable dough. If a 
rotting log nurture a bank of violets, it would be 
folly to despise the flowers because they sprang 
from a tainted source.” 

“It would be well if the twentieth century had 
a Lycurgus,” commented Plutarch. “For the 
purpose of sapping the foundation of avarice, 
he called in all the nefarious nuggets and decreed 
that iron should be used as current coin. If 
modern millionaires had to drive a yoke of oxen 
to carry home each $88 in dividends, the iron 
would enter their souls far more readily than into 
their pocketbooks.” 

“The profits of plunder ought to be checked.” 

“So they are. A check is drawn for each man 
who has his price, to stop him from branding his 
neighbor a thief. Never analyze the gold given 
as a gift. Does it matter which cow gave the 
skimmed milk if we get the cream ? If our pocket- 
book is made corpulent enough to choke our 
scruples, shall we inquire if our benefactor has 
cobwebs on his conscience ? A man’s criminality 
ought not to be based on the size of his bank 
account.” 

5*“ Greed and graft have always been blood 
money relations,” I said. “In the dawn of histor 
Adam owned the whole world except one littl 
tree and he wouldn’t be happy till he got that.” 


OF SINNERS. 


103 


“ But I never became a millionaire,” muttered 
the first man, disconsolately. 

“You would have been a multi-billionaire if 
you had held onto all your real estate. But per- 
haps, like Ann Drew Karnagee, you thought it 
a sin to die rich after living in the tainted atmos- 
phere of affluence.” 

“Then there was Caesar. He ran up a supper 
bill of twenty-five million in four months. My 
authority? Never mind; it’s all down some- 
where.” 

“You are right,” agreed Plutarch. “The turn- 
ing of tarnished tin into trust treasure isn’t con- 
fined to any one decade. Even Prometheus was 
guilty of petty larceny, for he stole fire from 
heaven and — ” 

“If you grasp the burning ploughshare of ill- 
gotten gains, do not complain if it sears your 
palms and scorches your brain and petrifies your 
heart.” Thus spoke Judas and departed. 

“Mortals say that money cannot be carried 
beyond the grave,” explained Tweed; “but there 
is spirit money as well as spirit men. Grafter 
Judas hanged himself to get rid of thirty pieces 
of silver — foolish man ! How little fitted he would 
have been for life in New York; on the board of 
aldermen, for instance, or as a district boss. We 
New Yorkers are frequently afflicted with itching 
palms, but money never burns our fingers as it 
does that of Judas in Hades. He throws it away, 


104 


THE ASBESTOS SOCIETY 


but it always returns to his grasp. If I had been 
empowered with the same necromancy on earth, 
I could have been president of the United States. 
Possessing Judas’ faculty, I could have paid each 
man his price and yet the money would always 
have returned!” 

“In the scales of God,” declaimed Portia, 
“charity will outweigh gold, unless Dives and 
Lazarus have changed places since the last tid- 
ings we had of them.” 

“For all that,” concluded Tweed, “the only 
objection I ever found to tainted money was that 
’taint enough! A little thieving is a dangerous 
thing; graft much or you’ll taste the penitentiary 
spring. Though Justice is blind, she isn’t deaf, 
and he who can jingle the most gold usually wins 
his case. The man who sent me to the island 
said, ‘I hope to see you in hell some day,’ and 
I’ve wondered ever since which of us he was 
doubtful about getting here.” 


HOW THE CREATION CENTERED 
ABOUT A PETTICOAT: A REVISED 
VERSION OF THE FIRST CHAP- 
TER OF DARWIN AND THE 
ASCENT OF MAN. 


CHAPTER VIII. 

How the Creation Cen- 
tered about a Petticoat: 
A Revised Version of 
the First Chapter of 
Darwin and the 
Ascent of Man. 

A LL was quiet along the Styx. The river 
banks were deserted. Caesar had been 
called to court to testify against a 
counterfeiter who had been punching 
his head, and Charon took advantage 
of the Roman’s absence to call upon his wife Cal- 
purnia, famed as being the only woman of whom 
is was said she was above suspicion. Charon’s 
craft, which to-day happened to be no more than 
an ordinary rowboat, was pulled up on the bank. 
In his haste to depart, the ferryman had even 
left his oars lying loose in the locks. I was 


107 


108 THE ASBESTOS SOCIETY 

considering the advisability of attempting to row 
back to Harlem when my attention was diverted 
by three dogs swimming in the placid waters of the 
Styx. Sitting astride them with all the ease of a 
circus clown was a boy whose forehead was 

branded thus: $ . It was the mark of Cain; 

therefore this must be the bad boy himself. 

As they drew nearer, I discovered that there 
was only one dog instead of three; it was the 
many-headed Cerberus. All went well until Cain 
pulled the dog’s tail. Then the nearest head 
snapped at the lad so quickly that he disappeared 
down its throat. Jonah had now arrived on the 
scene, and enraged at this infringement on his 
copyright, he caught the canine by its hind legs 
and holding it aloft, shook it vigorously. Cain 
dropped out of the centre cavity in the dog’s delta 
with a lighted stogie between his teeth. He tossed 
the nicotine nugget to Jonah and bade him take 
the canine to the pound of Pluto. 

“Charge it up to Pa,” the bad boy said airily. 
Jonah continued to hold out his hand. 

“No credit is given in Hell,” he sneered. 
“You’ve got to cash in all your checks.” 

Cain put his hand in the outstretched palm, 
but instead of the expected gold, he dropped 
therein the burning Stygian stogie. 

Who pulluteth his lips with blasphemy? Who 
imperilleth his parliamentary standing? Who 
yelleth in Sanskrit and Yiddish? Ask of the boy; 
he is of age and can speak for himself. 


OF SINNERS. 


109 


And speak for himself he did. 

“Despite the doubts cast upon my parentage 
by Darwin, I am Adam’s son,” he said, in re- 
sponse to my question. “But, say, I’m an angel 
with wings full grown compared with what Pa 
was when he was a boy.” 

“Do tell me about the time Adam was a boy,” 
I implored. In imagination I saw a spilling of 
red ink over the first page of the New York 
Universe: “Adam’s Own Story of the Rise and 
Fall of Man.” 

“Dad and Darwin do beat creation,” Cain 
commented. “The delineator of the ‘Descent of 
Man’ says that the earth grew as naturally as a 
mushroom on a dung heap. Since hearing of it, 
Topsy has been giving herself airs under the im- 
pression that as she ‘just growed,’ she was the 
first woman. Adam says he doesn’t mind being 
called a myth by the higher critics, but when an 
Afro-American minister proves by logic as indis- 
putable as a proposition in Euclid that the oldest 
inhabitant was a black man, and when Topsy 
lays claim to being his wife, he thinks it’s about 
time to draw the color line. Job tried to comfort 
Pa by telling him that it is better to be a myth 
than a martyr, for martyrs are burned that myths 
may live.” 

“And Mother Eve?” 

“Oh, she is an allegory, too. The legend of 
the lady of the pippins was generated into the 


no 


THE ASBESTOS SOCIETY 


genius of Genesis for the sole purpose of stimulat- 
ing the cerebral cells of the clergymen whose im- 
aginations have become stunted by much raking 
for Greek roots. Despite the ancient scandal 
when she listened to the solo of the serpent — and 
the result proved so disastrous woman has never 
been inclined to listen to any voice but her own 
since that distant day — Eve actually asked Adam 
to buy her one of those serpentine dresses the 
next time he went to Vanity Valley-on-the-Hud- 
son. Pa replied that because other women were 
reverting to the original clinging fig-leaf garb, was 
no reason why she should advertise her shame to 
the world. 

“‘To be fashionable is better than to be a Puri- 
tan mother,’ Eve retorted. A woman can find 
comfort in a new garter or a picture hat even when 
a scandal is hanging over her backbone.” 

“Then the episode of Eden — ” 

“Eve’s appetite for apples, which gave the 
world dyspepsia and all the ills to which flesh is 
heir, has been thrown up in her face ever since 
the world began. Come to think of it, though, 
Darwin says there never was any beginning.” 

“Darwin has had his day,” I observed. “His 
teaching is now obsolete. Some day I’m going 
to write a book — everybody does these days — and 
I have already copyrighted the title, so literary 
pirates may beware. It is to be called ‘The 
Ascent of Man.’ No more is man the old Adam, 


OF SINNERS. 


hi 


the Eden of his perfect behind him forbidding its 
gardens of delight. In his present imperfect is 
the creative ha untings of the perfect he is yet to 
be. As in the old days the man said, ‘The 
woman’ — so it is the woman who has given man 
the new birth. Creation always did centre about 
a petticoat, fables and creeds to the contrary not- 
withstanding.” 

“I asked Mother Eve about her childhood the 
other day, and she seemed lamentably ignorant 
of her younger days.” 

“If Adam hadn’t gone to sleep there would 
have been no women in the world,” I put in. 
Having a reputation as a confirmed misogynist, 
I felt that I must live up to it whenever occasion 
offered. 

“The queer part of it,” mused Cain, “is that 
he never woke up when the surgical operation 
was being performed and that, too, in the days 
when anaesthetics kept themselves hid in unpressed 
poppy pods. Catch a woman letting anybody 
take a rib from her without her knowing it!” 

“If woman is so wide-awake, how was it that 
Eve lost her certificate of character by getting 
drunk on apple cider?” 

“With the permission of Darwin and the rest, 
I will give you a revised version of the creation by 
the first higher critic— Cain, son of Adam and 
Eve: 

“In the beginning chaos created Cosmos. 

“And Cosmos continued to apply cosmetics to 


1 1 2 


THE ASBESTOS SOCIETY 


the face of the Globe and — Darwin was too busy 
to take notice. 

“And it came to pass that without Darwin to 
hold the universe in check, revolution arose; from 
revolution came evolution and evolution evolved 
into molecules which came into contact with pro- 
toplasm and by natural selection the latter sur- 
vived and became a plastic cell which in turn 
threw a fit and degenerated into the primordial 
germ, which is the germ of truth. This selection 
was so unnatural that it did not survive protogene 
and to swallow this up there came an ocean of 
eocene. 

“And it came to pass that in the aeon of eocene 
there was enwombed in the chaotic chasm, later 
called Siam, a Simiad who was to show his rela- 
tionship to the octopus by embracing the earth. 
And this Simiad grew according to his own fancy 
and — Darwin still slumbered. 

“And the merry morn tagged the shadows of 
night and became ‘it’. The number of the even- 
ing hours was eleven and of the day was twelve. 
Eleven and twelve make twenty-three — that’s the 
sum that spells ‘skidoo’. And the night departed 
in haste. 

“And in the time when it seemed good to him, 
Darwin awoke and made two great lights, the 
greater arc to rule the day and the lesser incan- 
descent to rule the night. And Darwin was the 
greater and Professor Huxley was the lesser; he 
made Herbert Spencer also. 


OF SINNERS. 


113 

“And behold! the man, because he had within 
him all other men, spoke Henry James English 
in all its simplicity from his birth up. Mother 
Earth sang lullabies to him, but the man was sore 
vexed at his mater's nonsense verses and comic 
opera lyrics; he swore a Saxon oath. That being 
the first word he had uttered, the man was called 
Adam. And all in the world there was none 
other like him. 

“Now when the evening and the morning were 
the fifth day, Darwin began to sit up and take 
notice. He took a leaf from Adam’s birth record 
and by soaking it in alcohol over night, words 
became visible and he read that in the primordial 
epoch when in the transition period Adam was 
a kangaroo, a woman started to sprout from the 
seed of truth, but the coming man thought she 
had better lie a little longer, and so he stunted 
her truth-telling for all time by thrusting her into 
the tobacco pouch of his kangaroo hide, knowing 
that there is no stunt like tobacco. 

“ Eve was content to come after man for three 
reasons; first, she knew it was fashionable to 
arrive late; second, she was timid and wanted 
Mr. Adam to see how the land lay now that the 
waters had been divided; third, she was having 
some clothes made for her debut and even with 
the assistance of Prof. Huxley, Tailor Darwin 
had not been able to get them ready on time. 

“Though eternal despairs deepened their nights 


THE ASBESTOS SOCIETY 


114 

about him, Adam was in a jolly mood and he said : 
‘ Let us make light of it ’ — and there was light ! 

“And when Eden was effulgent Darwin could 
see the man he had made and he saw that it was 
good. He was positive of that but was compara- 
tively sure he could do better, so he hypnotized 
Adam by telling him he had appendicitis and that 
an operation was necessary for his future well- 
being as a man, now that he had ceased to be a 
monkey. Dad had never studied physiology — 
though he made up for it later by dissecting Eve 
every chance he got, — and so he did not wonder 
how it came about that the only portion of his 
anatomy for which he no longer had a use, having 
given up climbing trees as being too undignified 
a diversion, had gotten so far up as to tickle him 
in the ribs. He remembered that saying about 
man being fearfully and wonderfully made, and 
being assured by Dr. Darwin that the operation 
for the removal of 1 a rag and a bone and a hank of 
hair ’ was as safe as an homoeopathic pill, he quietly 
fell asleep. 

“That is how man came to lose his tail, for con- 
trary to report, Darwin did not give man a tail 
but took one away; contrary also to the authorized 
version, woman was made out of man’s tail and 
not from his rib. Kipling little knew 7 how apt was 
his descriptive tag, for the tail consisted of a bone 
covered with a hank of hair and the dinosaur 
supplied the rag by tying a tin can to Adam’s 
tail. Thus man evolved like the tadpole, which 


OF SINNERS. 


ii5 

does not have to hire George Washington to do 
the woodsman stunt, as Nature arranges for the 
chopping off of its tail at the accepted time. What 
Nature does for the tadpole, Dr. Darwin did for 
man. But he bungled the job and cut the tail 
off too short. That’s the reason appendicitis is 
prevalent to-day. 

“And when Darwin looked on the woman he 
forgot his grammar and broke out into superla- 
tives without the justification of the rule of three : 
‘This is the most barbarous cut of all.’ 

“For this unkind reflection on her Marcel Wave 
and also for the reason that Mr. Darwin spared 
her costume but not her modesty, Eve condemned 
man to wear clothes for all time. 

“And as the evening and the morning were the 
sixth day, Darwin called to the woman: ‘This 
man thou shalt call Adam, surnamed Smith.’ 
Likewise to the man he said: ‘Whilst thou lovest 
this woman, her name shall be called Evelyn and 
her children shall be called the daughters of 
Evelyn, but when thy love groweth cold like the 
night, she shall be thy Eve. As the first parents, 
so shall be all posterity.’ 

“And as he spoke so was it. Man’s love was 
as brief as the life of last year’s calendar, and ever 
since the year one, women have been called the 
daughters of Eve. 

“Thus is fulfilled the prophecy of Darwin, as 
interpreted by the firstborn of the earth, Cain 
Smythe of Eden.” 



WHEN ADAM WAS A BOY: RANDOM 
RECOLLECTIONS OF THE 
OLDEST INHABITANT. 














CHAPTER IX. 


When Adam was a Boy: 
Random Recollec- 
tions of the Oldest 
Inhabitant. 

B Y the time Cain had completed his recital, 
we had reached an extensive estate in the 
suburbs of Cimmeria. 

“This is my birthplace,” said Cain, 
proudly. 

“What! the Garden of — ” 

“Haven’t you heard that E. P. Roe has driven 
us back to Eden? At first Mother didn’t want 
to come, for contrary to legendry lore, Eden is 
situated at the North Pole. It is pretty cold when 
one’s only covering is a shiver and the shadow of 
the Arctic circle. The only way Eve could keep 
warm was by reading Jonathan Edwards’ ser- 
mons. She was especially interested in the one 
wherein he said that sinners are held over the pit 


120 


THE ASBESTOS SOCIETY 


of hell as one holds a spider or some other — the 
‘other’ is mine: I have to correct his grammar 
as well as his theology — loathsome insect over 
the fire. 

“After reading that, nothing would do for 
Mother Eve but that she must cease shivering 
and become a sinner in order to have a hot time. 
Of course being a woman, the snake could not 
resist her fascination, and so she had no more 
reason to complain of the cold. Roe tried to open 
a chestnut burr, pricked his fingers and got so 
mad that he drove the old folks back to Eden. 
Mother Eve flirted with a Stygian plumber until 
she got him to put hot air pipes from Jonathan 
Edwards’ crematory to the Aiden roof garden. 
Weatherwise, the mater is again comfortable.” 

Adam and Eve were eating apples under the 
trees as we entered the Garden. So glad was 
Eve to see a man who wasn’t a shade that she put 
a pair of cherry lips to mine with a resounding 
smack. 

“Forbidden fruit,” scowled Adam. 

“There was a time,” I observed, “when I 
thought it better to welcome the sting of a wasp 
rather than the kiss of a woman, but that was 
before I had come in contact with a wasp and 
before I had been kissed by a woman. Both 
have taught me that I knew neither wasps nor 
women and that all things alliterative are not 
synonymous.” 


OF SINNERS. 


1 2 1 


Adam seemed anxious to change the subject 
from osculation to the origin of things kissable, 
and to a man, of course, the only things kissable 
are sweet little bits of laughing gurgling femi- 
ninity. 

“ Doubtless you would be interested in my first 
impressions of my helpmeet,” he said, “so I will 
give you the Genesis of Revelation. When I was 
a boy — ” 

“He always gets childish after dinner,” whis- 
pered Eve in an aside to me. Adam filled in the 
interruption by whittling on a toothpick. “I’m 
glad he has a plentiful stock of lumber, for if you 
can keep him whittling, you can get everything 
out of him except the truth. He thinks he cuts 
a chunk out of history every time he flourishes 
his jack-knife. The shavings he sells to the 
breakfast- food trust.” 

“When I was a boy,” continued Adam, “I 
invariably spoke in the first person, because I was 
the first person, but as Eve is my better half I 
am now only a third, so in future I will not even 
use the editorial ‘we,’ but simply ‘the man’.” 

“‘And the man said, ‘The woman’ — ” mocked 
Cain. 

“You’re not in America, where the children 
bring up the parents,” reproved Eve. “Besides, 
your information is but second-hand, for you were 
‘among those absent’.” 

“Eve was bone of my bone,” continued Adam, 


122 


THE ASBESTOS SOCIETY 


“but not flesh of my flesh. When I first set eyes 
on the woman she had not enough adipose tissue 
to impair in an infinitesimal degree the rapid 
penetration of an X-ray; in fact, from Cosmos 
to Cleopatra, woman has evaded the searching 
inquiry of the X and is still an unknown quan- 
tity.” 

“And the apple episode?” I questioned. 

“That came about very naturally, as did every- 
thing in those days. When the man and the woman 
were put in Eden, they were told that everything 
should be kept decently and in order. Now in 
those days, the English tongue had not reached 
the perfection it has to-day under the clarifying 
influences of the spelling reform. There was no 
Trench to tell us the use of the words and no 
popular novelists to bone the dictionary as a chef 
does a bird. Eve’s education had been sadly 
neglected. She didn’t know just what kind of 
order was meant and there was no ‘Complete 
Housekeeper’ which could be consulted and no 
‘ Answers to Correspondents ’ column in a news- 
paper to aid her. So she sat down and folded her 
hands. 

“There is an aphorism that Satan finds ‘mis- 
chief still for idle hands to do,’ and so when he 
saw that Eve left the dishes unwashed and her 
hair uncombed, he said, ‘Presto, change!’ and 
was turned into a snake. 

“Now it came to pass that the woman listened 


OF SINNERS. 


123 


to the voice of the charmer. Satan told of her 
grace and beauty, which Adam took as a matter 
of course after the first day and ceased to comment 
thereon, whereat the woman’s heart grew troubled. 

“If you wish to know wherein you have failed 
to provide for the wife of your bosom, you will 
find your neighbors well informed on the subject. 
Adam might have learned much from the snake, 
for Eve poured her woe into sympathetic ears — 
if snakes have ears. She wanted to know what 
was the best kind of order. 

“‘Apple-pie order,’ advised Satan promptly. 
Then being a lawyer, he peeled off an apple-ate 
laugh. 

“Eve related how her husband had tired of her 
and had taken to sleeping night and day in the 
hope that Darwin might take the hint and find 
use for another of his ribs — Adam had not yet 
been put wise to the fact that he was minus a tail 
and thought that he could populate a harem by 
dispensing with his ribs. 

“The next day the serpent made another social 
call on Mistress Eve, who tearfully besought a 
recipe for winning back her husband’s alienated 
affections. Satan pondered a moment; then he 
said: 

“ ‘ You can’t please Adam, your husband, unless 
you give him apple pie — the kind his mother used 
to make.’ Satan chuckled at the joke; he thought 
it so good that he vowed it should be retold in 
every age as a memorial of the fall. 


124 


THE ASBESTOS SOCIETY 


“ ‘ Give Adam some sass and then you can have 
everything in apple-pie order/ hissed the snake. 

“‘You order the apples and I’ll make the pies.’ 

“But Satan had been cunning in transforming 
himself into a snake instead of into a monkey, for 
he reminded Eve that he had no arms and she 
must pick the fruit herself. This she did and 
then the serpent said all good cooks tasted the 
ingredients to test their fitness for use. Eve took 
a bite of the pippin; then she called Adam to get 
the core. They liked the apple so well neither 
could wait for the pies to cook, but ate up all the 
forbidden fruit. 

“ Sans bathing suit and sans modesty, Adam was 
taking a sun bath on the beach, looking longingly 
over the gates of Eden at the wide world outside 
when Landlord Darwin appeared. 

“‘Front!’ came the command. 

“Adam tried to put on a bold front, but as his 
linen was in the wash and he had never been bell- 
boy in a hotel, he failed miserably. He blushed 
at the exposure and was mercifully covered with 
confusion. 

“‘I may as well tell the naked truth,’ he con- 
fessed. ‘I’ve been swimming, and the woman 
thou gavest me did steal my clothes, saying that 
to be in style she must have a tailor-made suit.’ 

“So Eve became the original new woman and 
ever since then the Edenless Adams have called 
marriage a failure whenever they couldn’t lay the 


OF SINNERS. 


125 

blame on the woman. And Eve — well, she can 
make apple pies as good as she ever did ! ” 

“But that green apple gave Mother Eve a belly 
ache,” ejaculated Cain, “and I came to deliver 
her. She has since said that wasn’t the last time 
I gave her a pain, but one can excuse her using 
slang after associating with such a fabulistic per- 
sonage as yEsop. 

“You would have lacerated laughter could you 
have seen Dad when the Ichthyosaurus — the 
mother-in-Latin of the stork — brought me to 
Eden. The chimney wasn’t large enough for the 
reptile relic of the Mesozoic age to crawl down, 
so it carelessly dropped me onto the stomach of the 
astonished Father Adam, breaking what has since 
been known as the floating rib. From that acci- 
dent arose the legend that woman was made of 
the crookedest part of man, which was the reason 
she couldn’t keep him straight. 

“ Eve welcomed me all right, for a mother takes 
to babies and goo goo talk as naturally as ducks 
take to water, but Adam felt queer — out of place ; 
he didn’t quite understand the thing and wondered 
why I hadn’t been born full-grown. He didn’t 
know whether I was a new kind of breakfast food, 
a condensed milk advertisement, or an alarm 
clock sent to wake him up early in the morning. 
Most of the time I was cutting my teeth, Dad was 
sulking out in the backyard under the apple tree 
with a pretty well-developed case of green eye 


126 


THE ASBESTOS SOCIETY 


and the blues. Occasionally he would come in 
and try to smile as he peeped over in the couch 
of fig leaves. Then Eve would take me up and 
hand me to Papa. He took me as if he were 
afraid I would bite and held me out at arm’s 
length as if he thought the thing might melt and 
ruin his full dress suit, which consisted of a smile 
minus the fig leaves. I understand that evening 
dress has differed little from that day to this.” 

“I confess that I am lamentably ignorant on 
the subject, but I find Henry James more lucid 
than the naturalists who wrote ‘ Wild Men I Have 
Known.’ What was the origin of species?” 

“With all deference to Darwin and the rest,” 
explained Cain, “methinks it was an apple seed!” 

And being the first seed of the woman, Cain 
certainly ought to know ! 


ELECTION DAY BEYOND THE STYX. 



CHAPTER X. 


Election Day Beyond 
the Styx. 

H ADES has two newspapers to mirror 
forth the daily doings of the Stygian 
smart set. Owing to the uncounted 
population of the resort, these pub- 
lications have circulations which would 
make the most yellow of earthly journals grow pink 
with envy. Here are some clippings from recent 
issues of the rival newspapers: 

THE CIMMERIAN CHATTERBOX 

Published Every Little While to Keep Pace 
with the Largest Circulation Lies 
of the American Press. 

Edited by Horace Greeley and other defeated 
politicians , who tell the truth if the man is not a 
subscriber , and print all the news that doesn't 
make a lightning coupling with the waste basket. 

Domestic News: Registering the Vote — It is no 
sinecure to be registrar of voters in Hades. If 


129 


THE ASBESTOS SOCIETY 


130 

you think it is, ask “Boss” Tweed, who threw 
up his job to Matt Quay, who is sticking it out, 
though it take all eternity. Many of those who 
take up their residence on the banks of the Styx 
know little about themselves and less about their 
ancestors. Notwithstanding this, there are few 
people in Hades who haven’t stood up before the 
registrar to have their noses counted, and the 
endeavor has been to have every Tom, Dick, 
and Harry, as well as every Jane, Mary, and 
Anne on the list. The age of Anne and also the 
more famous age of Elizabeth gave the registrar 
some trouble at first, but after telling the “eternal 
feminine” that no affidavit or birth certificate is 
required with the age declaration, the statistics 
became less alarming to the fair sex. 

There are some people, however, who think that 
to right a lie it is only necessary to write one and 
so requested blanks which they later mailed to 
Quay, the head nose enumerator. In this way 
they could tell what their age has been, without 
the annoyance of seeing the ungallant smile of 
unbelief depicted on the registrar’s face as he 
marks down “age 16” in his book and mentally 
adds fifteen as in the days when he studied oral 
arithmetic. Many a woman’s figure belies the 
statement that “figures can’t lie.” While the un- 
written law of chivalry makes it rude to ask a lady’s 
age, the law of Hades gives a man the right to es- 
timate her age if the lady slams the door in his face. 


OF SINNERS. 


131 

Woman’s rights are still a subject for debate. You 
can tell the age of a horse by his teeth, but no 
man can tell a woman’s age by her lack of gray 
hairs. 


STYGIAN SIFTINGS. 

Printers’ Pi Cooked to a Crisp for the 
Delectation of Lovers of Realism, and 
Served Hot from the Griddle of Our 
Reporter’s Imagination. 

Devil-baked by Arthur Big Brain and Willie 
Randy’s Nurse. 

N. B. — We have the largest circulation and we 
can prove it. We always arrange the event to 
suit the “extra” Our paper is read; our con- 
temporary is redder. Imitation is the sincerest 
proof of color blindness. We print all the news 
that no one else will print. It’s all here and all 
untrue. If you see it in the Siftings , you may be 
excused for having your doubts. We cater to the 
great reading public , not to the Sunday School. 
There is no hyphenated heaviness in this paper. 
Our motto: More muck to mix. 

EDITORIAL: AN ELECTION PROPHECY. 

Owing~to the many claims presented, the Sty- 
gian Siftings acknowledges that it is a difficult 


i3 2 


THE ASBESTOS SOCIETY 


matter to decide who has been the greatest bene- 
factor to Hell, but we think Nero should be ac- 
corded the palm. We say this not because we 
wish to play favorites, but merely for the sake of 
harmony, which we believe would be best secured 
by the selection of Nero, the violinist, at the com- 
ing election to fill the position of janitor in the'hall 
of fame. 


NERO RECALLED FROM THE 
CATACOMBS. 

{From the Cimmerian Chatterbox.) 

We do not reprint legends of the bib and rattle, so 
we treat our contemporary with the contemptuous 
silence which it deserves. Its scissor blades are 
longer than the nose of its editor. A subsidized 
press, which the Stygian Siftings is known to be, 
is unworthy of notice. But to the candidate put 
forth, whose conduct needs careful editing and 
much blue pencil, we would apostrophize thusly: 
Nero, your only claim to fame is that you mur- 
dered your mother, kicked your wife down stairs 
and made Rome howl while you painted the town 
red. Many another man has done all three and 
only got his picture in the rogues’ gallery and the 
newspapers in return for his efforts. Nero, 
put that upon your catgut and play it to the shade k s 


OF SINNERS. 


133 


of the tunes you have murdered! Nero was born 
without whiskers and he’s had many a close shave 
since then. Who was the first shaver? A 
coupon for a hair cut and a cup of red ink given 
for the best answer! 


THE CANDIDATE SPEAKS. 

( Oration 0 / Nero Steno graphically Reported jor 
the Stygian Siftings.) 

Ladies and Fellow-Citizens — If it please 
the ladies, I come to speak in my own behalf and 
crave your attention and your vote. As there 
appears to be no other candidate who is so anx- 
ious for the office of janitor of the hall of fame 
and general benefactor of Hades as I, it seems 
to me that no other qualifications are needed. 
However, there are some persons who are conceited 
enough to imagine that they will give me a hard 
run for my money. Why, fellow- citizens and 
voters, these men are not even natives of this fair 
country, the finest the sun forgot to shine upon! 
’Tis true they have been naturalized, but they 
never can be civilized. They may have push and 
cheek, but they lack the pull to get there. 

Some men are so suspicious that they won’t 
take stock in anything except the thermometer; 
under the present climatic conditions in Hades, 


134 


THE ASBESTOS SOCIETY 


that is bound to rise. The time for prejudice is 
past. It may be necessary to remind the opposi- 
tion that we are a populous community. We 
have not taken into our limits any farm lands. 
In all our borders there are only solid blocks of 
houses with here and there a football park, where 
the players may break each other’s bones on the 
gridiron. There are other institutions to which 
we might refer with pride, but the metropolitan 
press is stirring them up with a muck rake. We 
own up to all the charges made and herein we 
differ from summer resorts up on the earth, where 
they sit on the lid and say their prayers, and then 
lie a little about the real condition of things in 
their community. The Stygianite, who lives in 
the earth and not on it, cannot prevaricate without 
being found out. He owns up whenever he has 
to, and that is pretty often. Up on earth, how- 
ever, descendants of Ananias are as numberless 
as the hairs on the head of an after-taking ad- 
vertisement. 

I do not desire to answer the idiotorial attack 
of the editor of the Cimmerian Chatterbox, for 
I agree with him that it is better to boil your 
candidates in printers’ ink before election than to 
roast them afterward. 

If I decide to accept the office which the chair- 
man of the Roman executive committee assures 
me will be tendered to the only Nero, I promise 
you all exemption from taxes, divorce without 


OF SINNERS. 


i35 


six months’ probation in the backwoods — any- 
thing and everything you ask shall be yours. 
You deposit the ballot; Nero will do the rest. 

Among the reforms I intend to institute will be a 
wholesale cleaning of Hades. I will put fresh 
paint on the houses daily to keep Alexander from 
wearing out the buildings by leaning against them. 
I will install couches in the public parks for men 
who have run for office so much that they must 
be tired, and I will not debar any of the candidates 
I defeat from six feet of Squatters’ Ground. I 
will even distribute campaign mirrors to others 
who would like to see themselves as I see them. 
Of course I believe that the man should seek the 
office, but the only reason I ask for your votes is 
so that I may have another office to put on my 
official letter-head. I’m not sure I can find room 
for it, but I can increase the size of the paper and 
perhaps employ another typewriter. Don’t be 
like a balance wheel, ready to move in either 
direction on the slightest provocation. The man 
who borrows trouble on election day must return 
the goods if he bets on the wrong man. Never 
mind if the reformers ask : ‘ ‘Where did he get it ?’ ’ 
Every politician knows where his graft comes 
from; call on me the day after election and I’ll 
see that you all get yours. Don’t sell your vote 
for a mess of political pottage without seeing the 
color of my long green. 

And now I must conclude, for my voice is 


136 THE ASBESTOS SOCIETY 


husky with much speaking. Most of the great 
orators are dead. Cicero is dead; Demosthenes 
is dead, and to tell the truth, gentlemen, I don’t 
feel very much alive myself! (Great applause.) 


NERO’S LETTER OF ACCEPTANCE. 

To the Dilettante Political Club: Greet- 
ing — It is with pleasure that I accept the endorse- 
ment of your distinguished body. All I ask is 
that if the voters don’t feel like giving the position 
to me, kindly turn down the other fellows. Alex- 
ander and Louis XIV. will serve their constitu- 
tions, but not their country. They offered their 
services in the late unpleasantness, but only on 
condition that they were not to leave the country 
unless the enemy entered it. Your endorsement 
of me has been hanging over their heads like a 
dynamite bomb swung from a socialistic cobweb. 
Now the silence of political oblivion has fallen 
with a dull, sickening thud, and they are shaking 
in their boots with muffled ice and bated breath. 

The party plank is a see-saw to catch votes. I 
stand upon this platform: I am in favor of mak- 
ing Hades the centre of the universe as it now is 
of the earth, and building a bridge over the Styx 
to New York, so that disappointed politicians 
and all others weary of life may here find refuge 
and a warm welcome. 


OF SINNERS. 


i37 


I am in favor of fortifying the Styx, which 
would give Captain Kidd and his pirates a chance 
to swoop down on the commerce in New York 
Bay and get back to Hades unmolested. They 
could also form a combination with the chicken 
thieves of the African colony, and the supply of 
fowls brought across the river would establish 
for all time the pre-eminence of Hades as an all- 
the-year- ’round resort. 

Yours for harmony, 

Nero, Rex. 

Hotel Hereafter, 

Cimmeria, Hades-on- Styx. 

Mephisto, Proprietor and Cook. 


WHEN IS WAGED THE BATTLE OF 
BALLOTS . 

The Siftings is informed, on the best of authority, 
that an election is in progress. On his way to the 
office, the editor was buttonholed by a ward 
heeler and handed a pawned ticket. He was 
then conducted to a booth, where he retired — 
except for about three feet of trousers and two 
of leather. Having scratched to his heart’s con- 
tent, he saw his ballot chewed by a stuffed box, 
and was permitted to go to his sanctum, there to 
forecast the outcome — a more uncertain quantity 
than the weather brewed in the department of the 


138 THE ASBESTOS SOCIETY 


interior. Our reporter says it’s all over but the 
shouting and he is shouting for Nero one minute 
and for Alexander the next. Personally, the 
editor is in doubt as to whom will be elected. Un- 
fortunately for his peace of mind, he has heard the 
speeches of three of the candidates and has read 
the predictions of the chairmen of the different 
parties. One side or the other must be laboring 
under a “misapprehension.” Our attorney as- 
sures us that this phrase is perfectly safe. Having 
already two suits for libel on hand, we don’t feel 
like starting a clothing store to get rid of surplus 
suits. Misfit personalities always give the editor 
a libel suit. He needs a font of nonpariel with 
many daggers in it to keep off a minion of mis- 
understanding. Our attorney is Col. Robert G. 
Ingersoll. (See advertising columns.) 

Alexander needs a few votes and Nero needs 
a lot and by the time they get through needing, 
there will be no votes left for anybody else. Louis 
XIV. has bolted his party and is running on an 
independent ticket. It is said that his name 
appears on the voting lists of all the wards ; if so, 
he ought to be challenged. However, “Boss” 
Tweed, who is chairman of Nero’s campaign 
committee, may be confidentially expected to look 
out for his candidate’s interests — and his own. 

Some say the dark horse will win, having the 
support of the tea party gang and of the Prince 
of Darkness. In this spirit-moving campaign 


OF SINNERS. 


i39 


no one knows where the population is going to 
focus. The residence of a repeater is a mystery 
deeper than the fixed locale of a New York pool- 
room. After all, Hades is a good deal like the 
earth, where graveyards, forgetting the ethics of 
etiquette, yawn on election day to permit dead 
men to vote. Just as the paper goes to press, it 
is stated that pasters are being freely used and 
that 5,876,433 candidates have sprung up. The 
voting is still going on. If the polls close at the 
usual time, it is believed there would be about 
twenty small boys who had been overlooked in the 
voting, and these would kick as soon as they dis- 
covered they were not in the running. 

We understand that in Hades woman has her 
rights, that she can exercise her franchise, yet not 
a single woman has voted to-day. It all goes to 
show that a woman desires only what she can’t 
get. She would rather use the ballots for curling 
papers or to trim her bonnet than to put into a 
stuffed box. But there’s another reason. Ac- 
cording to the registration, not one woman in 
Hades is of votable age. None would acknowl- 
edge being more than “sweet and twenty!” 


ELECTION EXTRA! LAST EDITION l 

The battle of ballots is over. The last scratched 
ticket has been counted and the victor is — “Boss” 
Tweed! The New York politician, as Nero’s 


14 ° 


THE ASBESTOS SOCIETY 


manager, had charge of the distribution of tickets 
and pasted his own name over that of the Roman 
emperor. All’s fair in war and politics. Tweed 
deserves a tablet in the corridors of the hall of 
fame as well as the key to its front door! 


NOAH’S PERSONALLY CONDUCTED 
EXCURSION TO EARTH. 


' 















CHAPTER XI. 


Noah’s Personally Con- 
ducted Excursion 
to Earth. 


A LL the Stygian colony was thrown into 
a state of unusual excitement one hot 
December morning by the following 
posters replacing the campaign litho- 
graphs of Nero and Alexander: 

LAST CHANCE TO COOL OFF! 
Unsurpassed Funseeking 
EXCURSION 

To the Mirth-provoking Region of 
EARTH 

On Saturday, December 18. 

(Next day Sunday, giving ample time to get back 
— also to recover and look sober) 

BASEBALL AT THE BATTERY. 


i43 


144 


THE ASBESTOS SOCIETY 


The committee guarantees the game, not the 
quality of the playing. Umpire Shylock promises 
to make the score as close as his nature will permit. 
This is the line-up: 

Count Ercolo Antonio Matthioli — Mask Wear- 
ers — Louis Due de Vermandois. 

Ananias — Fancy Twirlers — Munchausen. 

Napoleon — First Sack — Louis XIV. 

Boswell — Middleman — Sancho Panza. 

Herr Bismark — Where the Keg Is — Rip Van 
Winkle. 

Tweed — Hole in the Wall — Quay. 

Nero — All Out — Alexander. 

Beau Brummel — Centre of Attraction — Ward 
McAllister. 

Bobbie Burns — Where the Daises Droop Their 
Heads — Longfellow. 

N. B. — Only dead-head tickets accepted. Get 
pasteboards from the committee. Reception. 
R. s. v. p. 

Noah, Chairman , 

P. T. Barnum, 

Captain Kane. 

All that week Noah’s personally- conducted 
excursion to earth was the one topic of conversa- 
tion. The Stygianites ceased to watch the ther- 
mometer and even forgot to stone the clerk of the 
weather bureau. It was the burning question of 


OF SINNERS. 


i45 


the hour in Hades and smouldered for several days. 

Two days after it had been posted, I joined the 
group reading the circular for the ’steenth time. 

“Is Noah capable of being at the helm?” 
asked Napoleon. “His record indicates that all 
he knows could be printed on a postage stamp 
without cancelling the stamp.” 

“He may be behind the times,” volunteered 
Methuselah, “but at least you must give Noah 
credit for knowing enough to come in out of the 
rain, which is more than could be said of most of 
the people of his day and generation.” 

“To my knowledge,” quoth Alexander, “there 
are but two instances recorded of our good friend 
Populi going wrong; first, when he refused to 
follow Noah into the Ark before I was born; 
second, when he failed to elect yours truly as 
custodian of the keys to the hall of fame.” 

“What mean the mystic letters ‘R. s. v. p.’?” 
asked Columbus, re-reading the circular. 

“Being an Italian, you Ought to know Greek,” 
I rejoined, becoming first Ade to the injured 
Dooleyism, who didn’t Seem to get My Dust. 
Some Pagan Spaniards can’t see an American 
joke without Housetop Comment in Capital Let- 
ters. But I had gone Too Far to Ring Off, so I 
spoke in a Tone like an English check: “It’s a. 
Foreign Phrase used by Americans in inviting 
People They Don’t Want. Translated into 
United States R. s. v. p. reads: Rush in; shake 


146 THE ASBESTOS SOCIETY 


hands; Victual up; Pull Out. Moral: Don’t 
be Inquisitive, for if I read History and the Zodiac 
aright, it’s a Cinch that you’ll have to hide your 
Elongated Flappers by Retreating to the Shadows 
of the Tall Cedars.” 

“ Revenons a nos moutons , redacteur ,” protested 
Napoleon, who abhorred slang and preferred his 
followers and his fables without any morals. To 
be called an editor made me quite willing to come 
back to the subject — even reporters are susceptible 
to flattery. 

“Anything that will distract one’s attention 
from the thermometer is welcome,” said young 
Lochinvar. “Can you wonder that a lover sighs 
like a furnace in this heated season when one 
sizzles by degrees? Alas! there are no summer 
girls in Hades, for they exist only in the shadow 
of an ice cream parlor. But I object to the com- 
pany of Jonah on the excursion. He would 
hoodoo the whole trip and some of us wouldn’t 
get back to the Styx alive!” 

Just then Izaak Walton joined the group. 

“I wonder,” he said, “what Jonah’s mother- 
in-law said when he returned home and told that 
story of the whale as his excuse for remaining out 
three nights. Other men tell variations of the 
same story, but they make them less fishy.” 

“By the bye,” I put in, “it seems to me the 
Morman has the biggest kick coming against 
his wives’ mothers, yet I’ve never heard a word 


OF SINNERS. 


147 


of complaint from any of them. How do you 
account for that, prophet?” 

“Speaking from experience, I would say that 
one mother-in-law is quite enough to have in a 
family unless a man is fond of excitement,” an- 
swered Joe Smith. 

“Boswell, what have I said on that subject,” 
asked Dr. Johnson. “I hate to repeat myself, 
but having said everything that’s worth saying, 
it’s up to Boswell.” 

“If every Johnson had his Boswell, Washing- 
ton might come into his own,” said that general. 
“But I suppose I ought to be satisfied, for am I 
not the father of my country?” 

“You seem to think you are the father of the 
whole world,” snapped Adam, who was jealous 
of the American. “That distinction belonged 
to me when your country was still shrouded in 
the mists of the unknown. I have talked with 
all the historians and as far as I can learn, you 
are the father of no one and certainly not of your 
country. You aren’t even a Pilgrim Father and 
if all Americans followed in the footsteps of their 
first president, vital statistics would be less satis- 
factory to Roosevelt than they are. Now, when 
I was a boy — ” 

“Listen to the oldest inhabitant,” jeered Wash- 
ington. “Adam recalls his boyhood days with 
extraordinary vividness for a man who never had 
any.” 


148 THE ASBESTOS SOCIETY 


“You may have been first at banquets and first 
in the hearts of your countrymen,” continued 
Adam, “but you weren’t first in the heart of 
your wife. As you married a widow, some man 
must have been ahead of you there.” 

“ Then there’s that old cherry tree fable which 
ought to have been uprooted from the school- 
books long ago,” said Ananias, who also had an 
axe to grind. “It’s unfortunate for the perpetua- 
tion of truthfulness that the only offspring of the 
father of his country is a chestnutty cherry tree, 
with a few chips lying on the ground.” 

Baron Munchausen gave George Washington 
a resounding slap on the back. 

“You ought to give up being a pattern of verac- 
ity and take to writing fiction,” he said. “An 
historical novel by General Washington would be 
the Great American Novel which publishers have 
announced for the last hundred years and which 
many authors have thought themselves bald- 
headed trying to produce.” 

“I understand that after the ball game, Tenny- 
son will write ‘ The Charge of the Eleven.’ ” 

“Isn’t he wrong in his numeral? Baseball 
is a nine, which is somewhat of a discrepancy.” 

“Oh, that’s poetic license!” 

“May I be Shakespearean a moment?” asked 
Lord Bacon. 

“You cannot, even for a moment,” declared 
the Bard of Avon. “I allow no infringements 
on my copyright.” 


OF SINNERS. 


149 


‘‘Don’t get excited,” returned milord. “All 
shades look alike to me and it would be a poor 
expert who couldn’t prove you were somebody 
else by your signature. Besides, who is Shakes- 
peare anyway? The sweets of notoriety are not 
for you. You have never been interviewed, your 
picture does not figure in any patent-medicine 
advertisement, and no phonograph record re- 
peats your blankety-blank verse without variation. 
Why, Bill, in these days you couldn’t pass an 
examination in Shakespeare without the assist- 
ance of half a dozen books of notes, a glossary, 
and five professors to tell you what you meant. 
To be the writer of a coon song is to be famous; 
to pen ‘Hamlet’ is simply to provide food for 
bookworms.” 

“Let’s arbitrate,” suggested ^Esop. 

“None of your fables for mine,” said Shakes- 
peare, slangily. “You would designate two dogs; 
I would select two cats; they would call in a fox 
for the odd. The arbitrators would come to 
talk it over. I would smile and rub the cats’ 
fur the right way. You would fill the dogs with 
porterhouse steak rare, broiled till the air for 
miles around would be rich with the odor, and 
served with butter gravy. I would cram the cats 
with liver and cream. You would turn the fox loose 
in the chicken yard and give him the run of the 
goose pasture. Oh, I know how arbitrations 
are run, whether they be conducted by cats or by 
capital!” 


THE ASBESTOS SOCIETY 


150 

“This is no occasion for petty jealousies,” 
remonstrated Izaak Walton. “I would rather 
cull flowers just now from the banks of a trout 
stream than train for a prize fight. Hip! hip! 
hip! for the Hippodrome! Have you forgotten 
that you are going to exchange Hades for New 
York, where you can pull the sky over you for 
cover, use the moon in place of an incandescent 
light, the four points of the compass for bed posts 
and a morning shower for an alarm clock? We 
are going to find rest near the heart of Nature, 
where bookmakers are unknown and politicians 
have no higher ambition than to sit on a rail fence 
and dream of whittling down the salaries of the 
school teachers when they get a place on the 
board of education.” 

“Boss” Tweed smiled for the first time since 
his election as janitor of the hall of fame. 
r “Noah may have a map of the road to the 
millennium,” he said, “but he has gotten side- 
tracked if he thinks New York is one of the sta- 
tions along that route!” 


THE MAN WITH THE MEGAPHONE. 





CHAPTER XII. 


The Man with the 
Megaphone. 

s s "X "X T E’RE off,” sang out Noah, using a 
^ ** \/\/ huge megaphone which could be 
T Y heard throughout the length of 
the train. “Perhaps it was not 
necessary to tell you that we 
had started, but the megaphone man on all 
‘Seeing New York’ trips is expected to begin 
his lecture with that observation, and as we’re 
going to the earth, we must do as mortals do. 

“Due notice of our return will be published 
in the newspapers, but as our stay in the metrop- 
olis is indefinite, our address has been left with 
the constable, and the maid has been instructed 
to accept service. 

“Speaking of maids reminds me that the dear 
women are rather hotter under their lace collars 
just now than usual and are saying things quite 
horrid. You see King Henry the Eighth in- 
sisted upon leaving the women at home. To 
this Caesar was opposed. 

‘“Your wife may be above suspicion,’ said 
Henry, ‘but I’m not so sure about mine. Six 
women tagging after a man are just about half a 
dozen too many.’ 


T 53 


154 


THE ASBESTOS SOCIETY 
f *' 

“Sir Walter Raleigh joined forces with Caesar 
and they brought the matter to the attention of 
His Satanic Majesty. The metropolitan stores 
have just announced a bargain sale of dress goods, 
so Lucifer knew he would have an insurrection 
on his hands if he didn’t let the woman go shop- 
ping. You will notice that the ladies are with us.” 

“If Lucifer had not been a fallen angel,” whis- 
pered King Henry in my ear, “he would not have 
known women so well!” 

“Have you noticed the charming costume of 
Mother Eve, who is chaperoning the party?” 
asked Ward McAllister. “Her hat is made up 
of a little basket turned upside down, with trail- 
ing plants hanging from the top, kept from falling 
by a tangled mass of ribbon, tickled by a feather 
that like the ostrich from which it was taken, hides 
its head in a mound of lace and — but how can 
a mere man describe a woman’s bonnet ade- 
quately unless he has paid the bill for it ? Adam 
says he would get a divorce if he could name any- 
body but a snake as co-respondent.” 

The megaphone continued to assault our ear 
drums. 

“We are still in the region regarded as mythi- 
cal by Robert Ingersoll,” went on Noah, “and 
I am pleased to say that that gentleman is return- 
ing to haunt the famous city which is assessed for 
one of our largest avenues paved with good inten- 
tions. This resolution business begins January 


OF SINNERS. 


i55 


first with a bracing against booze and a curtail- 
ing of the smoke luxury, but it’s bones to nickles 
that it ends on the third day of grace with a general 
retreat all along the line and the devil in full pur- 
suit. Most men proceed to lay a whole sidewalk 
before the grade is fixed.” 

The train started up hill with a jolt, but dis- 
daining to notice the inconvenience of his passen- 
gers — it was a personally-conducted tour, — the 
Grand Sir Knight of the Hand Car continued: 

“This road is inclined to take you to your des- 
tination, and I trust the gravity of the situation 
appeals to you. Passengers are permitted to do 
one of three things: They may remain seated on 
the up grade provided they ply their fans vigor- 
ously enough to keep the engine from getting a 
hot box; or they may get out and walk up hill, 
or if they need exercise, they may get out and push. 
This is a free country where pull doesn’t count. 

“We always look out for the comfort of our 
patrons. No passenger ever got a cinder in his 
eye from a locomotive on this road. Electricity 
is the motive power and it may interest the scien- 
tists present to learn that I have discovered the 
composition of electricity and with it the secret 
of life. Its power is derived from the action of 
its principal element, oxygen, in the process of 
uniting with the other element, hydrogen, with 
which it compounds in varying proportions up 
to seven parts by weight of oxygen to one of hydro- 
gen, beyond which point the product becomes 


156 THE ASBESTOS SOCIETY 


water. Up on earth, they need coal or its equiva- 
lent to furnish power to produce electricity. 
Down here we make it from the decomposition 
of water and permitting the oxygep. and the hydro- 
gen to re-unite. As a result of this friction we 
get a fire many times hotter than that produced 
by coal, emitting oxygen instead of carbonic acid 
gas. That explains the exhilaration of the air of 
Hades and is one reason for its popularity as a 
health resort. 

“No charge is ever made on this line for exces- 
sive baggage. You may carry as much as you 
please, provided you carry it yourself. The only 
live stock taken in the baggage cars are camels. 
These ‘water wagons’ might be useful if the as- 
sembled company gets dry before New York is 
reached, and if the train should break down, the 
camel can always be depended upon to get a 
hump on itself. 

“The Stygian subway, ladies and gentlemen, 
is the greatest scenic route in the world — on a 
clear day. From the observation cars one gets 
a view of all that is to be seen — earth and dark- 
ness. This road is a great feat of engineering 
from the fact that it has no tunnels, no bridges 
and no curves. It is the only double tracked 
line in Hades and each rail is so widely separated 
from its fellow that they are not on speaking terms. 

“A third rail was added for safety and rapid 
progress, movement having been the order of 


OF SINNERS. 


i57 


things since the earth began to revolve upon its 
axis. It was found that a single track would not 
fit the rolling stock and an attempt to propel a 
two-wheel car over a single-rail road by Ananias 
provoked much cussing. The road-bed did not 
lie so well as the engineer who laid it! 

“This is the only line in the world where the 
time-tables are made solely to suit the public and 
where a man never loses his train nor his temper. 
If the schedule as formulated by the general man- 
ger, Myself, does not suit you, application to the 
division superintendent, Myself, will be all that 
is necessary. Complaints to the general passen- 
ager agent, Myself, are at once referred to Me in 
My capacity of president and thus no time is lost 
in red tape. I hold every office within the gift 
of the road, the only practical solution to labor 
difficulties. 

“We are now nearing Hellgate, which is at the 
entrance to New York. Never having been to 
America, I asked Benedict Arnold to write the 
remainder of the lecture. You may therefore 
depend upon this description of the Great Re- 
public as being strictly impartial and without 
prejudice. As an aside, I may as well tell you 
that before starting for New York, Arnold took 
the precaution to put an iron band around his 
pocketbook. 

“America, according to the man who sold it, 
is the land where preachers are paid from $500 


158 THE ASBESTOS SOCIETY 


to $20,000 according to their ability to dodge 
Satan and tickle the ears of the wealthy; where 
no clergyman writes a sermon without a concord- 
ance in one hand and a popular novel in the other; 
where the deacons conduct an auction for the best 
pews, and where there is a daily round of theat- 
ricals by the Sunday School and chicken suppers 
by the Ladies’ Aid, with collections and religion 
thrown in for a change on Sunday. 

“This is the land where the politician shakes 
poverty by the hand before election and later 
altogether; where they have a congress of four 
hundred men to make laws for a supreme court 
of nine to set aside; where they have prayers on 
the floor of the national capitol and whiskey in 
the basement; where men vote for what they do 
not want for fear they will get what they want by 
voting for it; where other men stay away from 
the polls one day and swear about the result the 
other three-hundred and sixty-four days in the 
year. 

“American elections are held in the suicidal 
atmosphere of drear November, when the can- 
didates roam about, seeking whom they can 
deceive. If saying what isn’t true so often that 
you end by believing it yourself, constitutes a liar, 
and if the lie is a sin to everybody but oneself, it 
is to be hoped the recording angel charitably 
shuts up his book and takes a vacation 
about election time. If one party could gain con- 
trol of the whole earth, its leaders would start an 


OF SINNERS. 


i59 

agitation to make their opponents go to the ex- 
pense of fencing it in. 

“The American press is nothing if not enter- 
prising. Why, if King Edward were to fall down- 
stairs tomorrow and break his meerschaum pipe, 
New Yorkers would know of it, through their 
newspapers, five hours before he knew it himself! 

“Hades gets most of its paving material from 
the American metropolis, Apollyon having been 
given a perpetual contract by the Board of Aider- 
men. In New York there is such a multiplica- 
tion of conveniences that an electrician, a tele- 
phone girl and a plumber have to occupy one’s 
flat day and night to keep things in order. It is 
the antithesis of Philadelphia and of Venice, 
whose streets are never torn up every second day 
for subways or to insert more pipes. So disgust- 
ingly peaceful is the Quaker City that one can 
lean out of the window in his pajamas and dip up 
water for the morning bath without waking up the 
policeman on the beat; all is so quiet along the 
Delaware to-night that no sticks of dynamite are 
piled on the front doorstep and no sky-scrapers 
are being erected between twilight and dawn to 
be demolished for something else as soon as the 
tenants have been elevated to the twentieth 
story. 

“This is the land where the captain of industry 
is he whose pockets so bulge with other people’s 
money that the door of the prison is not large 


160 THE ASBESTOS SOCIETY 

enough to admit him; where the golden calf is 
worshipped as a god and the church is used as a 
waste-basket for unuttered prayers and for good 
resolutions, newly bom; where to be virtuous 
is to be a crank, and to be honest is to be lonesome ; 
where the citizens sit on the safety valve of con- 
science and throw wide open the throttle of 
energy; where the seat of intellect is in the stom- 
ach. 

“The principal product of this remarkable coun- 
try is girls, who tolerate rich papas only until 
they can buy a duke or a prince at the 
reigning market quotation. The American girl 
divides her attention between picture hats, chew- 
ing gum and ice cream sodas, beginning the day 
with an orange phosphate at ten A. m., and finish- 
ing it and the pocketbook of her steady company 
at twelve p. m. with a menu of soft-shell crabs, 
lobsters and Roman punch eaten without a qualm 
of conscience or a disordered stomach! 

“America is a country where to look after the 
interests of capital is statesmanship and to do 
anything for labor is socialism and anarchy; 
where politicians before election orate upon the 
identity of interests of the capitalist who lives on 
The Avenue and the laborer who is kept in the 
back alley: a point which becomes so obscured 
the day after election as to require the help of 
the police and the militia to make clear. It is a 
youthful, boasting nation which forgets the 


OF SINNERS. 


161 


aphorism that children should be seen and not 
heard, whose every citizen holds a firecracker in 
one hand, a Fourth of July oration in the other 
and wears Declaration of Independence chips 
upon his shoulders in perpetual challenge to 
the world. 

“America is a nation whose goddess of Liberty 
was foreign born, baptized in blood, then sent 
into exile, where, serene and indifferent, she turns 
her back on the land of her adoption and looks 
out to sea, a heartless statue! This is a country 
without a language of its own, with a national 
hymn that sings only of New England and is set 
to stolen music, whose only national dance is the 
cakewalk and most popular tune a rag-time coon 
song; a land whose people never allow the voice 
of conscience to speak louder than the bell of the 
cash register.” 

“Despite his century of banishment, Benedict 
Arnold is still a traitor to his country,” I observed. 

“Not at all,” answered Washington. “Why, 
he doesn’t know the meaning of the word 
‘traitor’ when separated from its Websterian 
environment. His so-called betrayal of his 
country was but an incident to his winning a 
woman, and where there’s a woman, man will 
make a way. Before the organization of the 
Asbestos Society of Sinners, the historians con- 
spired with Pluto to fry us in our own fat, but 
now, immune in our asbestos attire, it’s Siberia 


162 


THE ASBESTOS SOCIETY 


for Satan, and there’s always something doing in 
the Douma of the Dead. As for me, I’m tired 
of being called ‘truthful George’: it calls for such 
plain language that somebody’s feelings are sure 
to be singed. What’s the use of telling the truth 
when a lie is so much more believable and — 
interesting? ” 

Being busily engaged in writing a letter to the 
city editor of the New York Universe, I did not 
notice that the blare of the megaphone had 
ceased. It was not until the car shot out of the 
darkness that the letter dropped from my hand. 
I gasped in astonishment. 

“The Battery! All change!” sang out the 
voice in the megaphone. But the car did not 
stop. As if shot from a catapault it leaped over 
the trees and vaulted the aquarium. It flut- 
tered in the air and then settled down in the waters 
of the bay like a bird with a broken wing. 

When I opened my eyes I was being rolled 
over a barrel, and an ambulance surgeon was 
forcing some very bad whiskey down my throat. 
Whether it was the liquor or the water I had swal- 
lowed I know not, but my surroundings seemed 
those of the Twenty- third Street water front, 
west, rather than of the Battery. Was I being 
rescued from the sinking of a ferry boat or from 
Noah’s Ark? Had my trip to Hades consumed 
only the flash of the grain of sand in Time’s hour- 
glass which had seen me sink to the bottom of the 


OF SINNERS. 


163 


river and rise again, or had I been the guest of 
the shades of the Styx for a day, a month, a year ? 
A man who had taken a whiskey straight might 
have solved the problem, but to a man whose 
brain was befuddled by mixed drinks, coherent 
thought was impossible. I fell asleep, content 
to drift and drift and dream — of devils. 


The End. 




































THE LAND OF FULFILLED DESIRE. 












































































































































































































































































EPILOGUE. 


The Land of Fulfilled 
Desire. 

My dear Mr. Bangs: 

I have been to Hades in search of a sensation, 
but even the devil couldn’t keep a newspaper man 
down and so once more I am in the territory of 
the tired — New York. It may interest you to 
know that I am holding down the city desk of the 
Universe, the former incumbent having disap- 
peared shortly before my return from the domain 
of the departed. He left a letter addressed to 
his successor and I feel that I am violating no 
confidence in divulging its contents : 

“What impels me to record the experiences of 
this, my last night on earth, I do not know. Per- 
haps it is to counterfeit courage, for when a man 
receives a ‘ticket to the hereafter’ he feels the 
need of something to brace his backbone, just as a 
boy will whistle in make-believe bravery on round- 
ing a dark corner. 

“I felt more than ordinarily weary, for I seemed 
167 


1 68 THE ASBESTOS SOCIETY 

to be losing my grip on my work and on — life! 
For several minutes I had been idly toying with 
a pearl-handled revolver which I used as a paper 
weight, when a rustling of paper made me turn. 
On the floor was a letter. 

“‘That’s odd,’ I muttered. ‘The shades who 
deliver letters from our Stygian correspondent 
usually lay them upon my desk like any well- 
regulated ghost would do.’ 

“As I stooped to pick up the epistle, I noticed 
that my blue pencil lay upon my pen, the two 
forming a cross. Then I knew what had exor- 
cised the shade and frightened it away. To an 
imaginative man, the episode was uncanny. 
And it was night ! 

“Using the penholder as a paper cutter, I tore 
open the envelope and took out the letter. It 
began without formalities: 

“‘I suppose my interviews with Cimmerian 
citizens were pronounced the most sensational 
fakes of the year. Did you state whether the 
manuscript from the domain of the departed had 
a sulphurous tinge or was redolent with spices 
and perfumes ? The wireless correspondence 
from Hades-on-Styx must have created much 
excitement on earth. People may doubt the 
genuineness of my description of Hades, but they 
will have a hot time proving me wrong, although 
nowadays not even the parson believes in a scorch 
for every sin. Don’t you want to come and take 


OF SINNERS. 


169 


my place as scribe to Satan? I have been fight- 
ing down a desire to have you visit this subterra- 
nean resort, for did one but express the wish, it 
would be gratified in this, the Land of Fulfilled 
Desire. If Pluto says “ Come ” — ’ 

“Obeying a sudden impulse, I struck a match 
and held the letter in the flame. Instantly it was 
snatched from my hand, though I could see no 
one. At the same moment every electric light 
in the building went out, leaving the place in 
darkness. On the air was a pungent odor of 
brimstone. 

“‘The devil!’ I ejaculated. That invocation 
sealed my fate: it was the Styx and the Simple 
Life for mine, via the Jersey ferry. And it was 
night!” 

In the lore of Longfellow, “All the rest is 
mystery.” 


Lawrence Daniel Fogg. 

































































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